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February 2012 Newsletter

GenealogyBank Adds 31 Million Records in February!

We constantly add more newspapers and obituaries to our online archive. Currently, GenealogyBank features over 5,850 newspapers from all 50 states, with more than 209 million obituaries and death records. Here are some details about our most recent additions (we actually added new content to thousands of titles, but the following is a representative sample): a total of 120 titles from 30 states plus the District of Columbia. We've shown the date ranges so that you can determine if the new content is relevant to your personal research.

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Remember That Shipwreck Story? Here's What Really Happened!

In last month's issue of GenealogyBank News, we ran a "Discoveries" article with the startling headline: "Dead Wife Saves Drowning Husband!" That article told a remarkable story about a man who survived a ship's explosion when his wife's coffin floated by just as he was drowning. However, by digging deeper into our newspaper archives we found out more details that make this story even more astonishing—and tragic—than the initial article we presented last month.

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'Newspapers for Genealogists,' a Free PowerPoint Download

During the RootsTech genealogy conference in Salt Lake City earlier this month, Tom Kemp—GenealogyBank's Director of Genealogy Products—gave a lecture explaining how to use newspapers to discover your family history, entitled: "Newspapers for Genealogists: Document Every Day of Your Ancestors' Lives." Several of the attendees came up to Tom afterward asking if they could get a copy of the PowerPoint presentation he used to accompany his lecture. We decided Tom's lecture would make a good "Search Tips" article for our newsletter—and we are happy to now make his 95-slide PowerPoint presentation available as a free download to our readers.

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'Son's Wish to Reunite His Family Gratified after Thirty Years'

As our monthly "Discoveries" feature shows in each issue of GenealogyBank News, part of the pleasure of researching your family history in historical newspaper archives is the occasionally funny, bizarre, unusual or heartwarming story you run across. Here is an example of a touching reunion story involving the Moeshling family in 1900, a gathering that took 30 years to accomplish and brought together family members from two continents.

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Ask the Genealogist

Q: I have been up against this brick wall for about 20 years. Could you please help? My grandfather's name is Jesse Elleman. In 1900 he lived in Prairie County, Arkansas. In 1910 he was still there with his family: Liddie, Cyrus and George. Their names are spelled Ellman in the census. This last name has been spelled several different ways. Anyway I can't find a death record or burial record for Jesse, born in 1858 in Kentucky. I also cannot find where he married his first wife, Julia Ann Peden, or his second wife Lydia—or her maiden name.

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