{"id":1219,"date":"2012-07-23T15:07:14","date_gmt":"2012-07-23T15:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=1219"},"modified":"2012-07-23T15:07:14","modified_gmt":"2012-07-23T15:07:14","slug":"treasured-discovery-only-known-photos-of-ancestors-found-in-old-newspapers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/treasured-discovery-only-known-photos-of-ancestors-found-in-old-newspapers.html","title":{"rendered":"Treasured Discovery: Only-Known Photos of Ancestors Found in Old Newspapers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction:<\/em><\/strong> Scott Phillips is a genealogical historian and owner of Onward To Our Past\u00ae genealogy services. In this guest blog post, Scott tells about finding the only-known photos of two of his ancestors in old newspaper wedding announcements\u2014and a surprising engagement notice that told him something he never knew about his own mother!<\/em><\/p>\n

Summertime! The livin\u2019 is easy and traditionally it is the time for weddings. My bride and I just celebrated our 37th<\/sup> wedding anniversary a short time ago and it got me to thinking about how much I have gained in my family history and genealogy work from searching for engagement notices and wedding announcements in GenealogyBank.com.<\/p>\n

\"Mr.<\/a>
The author\u2019s wedding photo from 1975.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As many of us go about developing and nurturing our family trees, I think you\u2019ll agree that one of the best aspects of that work is discovering photographs of our ancestors. Let me tell you, few places that I have found beat newspaper engagement and wedding stories for personal photos\u2014sometimes the only picture anyone in the family has of a particular ancestor. I have had terrific success in my family tree with these types of articles.<\/p>\n

A great example was the newspaper article I recently found when researching my Havlic branch. I discovered the wedding announcement for Eleanor Anna Havlic as reported in the Plain Dealer<\/em> on 30 September 1928 in Cleveland, Ohio. Not only was I thrilled that there was a picture of my ancestor, but it showed some lovely period dress for a 1928 wedding. Additionally, I was treated to the names of parents, spouse, in-laws, addresses of both, the new couple\u2019s home address, bridal party members, wedding date, and the name of their church.<\/p>\n

\"Mrs<\/a>
Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), 30 September 1928, page 50.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Another nice find for me was the wedding story of another cousin, Margaret Tager, again in the Plain Dealer<\/em> (27 August 1961) in Cleveland. Once more I was excited to find an old wedding photo that illustrated the current fashion, this time of the early 1960s, plus addresses, parents\u2019 and in-laws\u2019 names, the name of the church where the ceremony was held\u2014and there was even a mention of where both the bride and groom attended college. As an added treat, the newspaper article explained where the couple honeymooned.<\/p>\n

\"Margaret<\/a>
Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), 27 August 1961, page 108.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the case of both of the above family members, the old newspaper articles provided me with the only photos I have of these particular ancestors, which make them all the more important to my work, my family, and our family tree.<\/p>\n

Oh, and don\u2019t forget that every so often you just might find one of those \u201cah-ha\u201d moments we all enjoy so much in genealogy. I had one myself not long ago.<\/p>\n

After working on one of my grandparent\u2019s branches I was having some fun searching different family surnames to see what I could find. As I was running my grandmother\u2019s married name lo and behold I found an engagement announcement! I clicked on the article to find\u2026my mother had been engaged one time before becoming engaged to, and then marrying, the man who was to become my father. This was a fact that had not been a topic of discussion in my life ever before.<\/p>\n

Thank goodness my mom made the choice she did or I wouldn\u2019t be here writing this today!<\/p>\n

That was a close call\u2026and a really fun discovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introduction: Scott Phillips is a genealogical historian and owner of Onward To Our Past\u00ae genealogy services. In this guest blog post, Scott tells about finding the only-known photos of two of his ancestors in old newspaper wedding announcements\u2014and a surprising engagement notice that told him something he never knew about his own mother! Summertime! The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12713],"tags":[3,5245,5289,1167,5291,2046,2053,2054,1129,1658,2154,1656,1762,12,5197,465,2191,5354,5355,2051,2050,2045,1761,27,1091,3314,2597,5435,2153,2052,2049],"class_list":["post-1219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genealogy-research-tips","tag-ancestry","tag-announcements","tag-church","tag-cleveland","tag-cousin","tag-engagement-announcements","tag-engagement-notices","tag-engagement-records","tag-family","tag-family-history-2","tag-family-photos","tag-family-tree","tag-father","tag-genealogy","tag-grandmother","tag-historical-newspapers","tag-history","tag-life","tag-long","tag-marriage-announcements","tag-marriage-notices","tag-marriage-records","tag-mother","tag-newspapers","tag-ohio","tag-phillips","tag-photos","tag-scott","tag-wedding","tag-wedding-announcements","tag-wedding-notices"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}