{"id":4340,"date":"2013-08-12T15:26:02","date_gmt":"2013-08-12T15:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=4340"},"modified":"2022-12-27T13:49:01","modified_gmt":"2022-12-27T18:49:01","slug":"newspaper-articles-fill-blanks-in-family-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/newspaper-articles-fill-blanks-in-family-history.html","title":{"rendered":"Newspaper Articles Fill Blanks in Family History"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/em><\/strong>: <\/em>In this article, Scott Phillips researches old newspapers to find stories about a member of his extended family, the 19th<\/sup> century philanthropist John Huntington\u2014a founding donor of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Scott is a genealogical historian and owner of Onward To Our Past\u00ae genealogy services.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

While growing up, one of my favorite family weekend trips was to visit the Cleveland Museum of Art<\/a>. I would marvel at the art, the sculpture, and of course as a young boy, the Armor Court which displayed suits of armor. Later, during my college years, the Museum was my favorite destination as an escape from the pressures of studying. I\u2019d make the 1\u00bd hour drive over to Cleveland and enjoy the art, especially my all-time favorite painting, Water Lilies (Agapanthus)<\/em> by Claude Monet. Years later during my mother\u2019s 90th birthday family reunion in Cleveland, I was proud that my son and daughter-in-law took our young grandsons to visit the Museum as well.<\/p>\n

Amazingly, just a few days ago I learned I had yet another family reason to appreciate the Museum: I discovered that one of my ancestors was a founding donor to establish the Museum.<\/p>\n

\"portrait<\/a>
Portrait of John Huntington. Credit: from the author\u2019s collection.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I made this discovery while in the midst of a review of those family tree branches that I had not fully researched. I began work on one of my Bohemian ancestors, Frank Joseph Ptak, who married Margaret Alice Walker. I realized that I had never researched the Walker family, so I began there. After utilizing a few resources, such as the marvelous online database of the Cleveland Public Library\u2019s<\/a> Cleveland Necrology File<\/a>, I was deep into searching the newspapers of the time on GenealogyBank.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I was diligently reading marriage announcements, obituaries, and a few interesting stories regarding a street assault or two, when a sentence at the bottom of the marriage announcement titled \u201cDalbey-Leek\u201d caught my eye.<\/p>\n

\"wedding<\/a>
Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), 6 June 1937, page 97<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As you can see the line stated: \u201cThe bride is a grand niece of the late John Huntington, philanthropist.\u201d Having been a fundraiser myself in an earlier career, I just had to look into this philanthropist. This was especially true since I knew Margaret Alice Walker\u2019s mother was Ann H. (Huntington) Walker.<\/p>\n

I took a chance and searched directly on John Huntington, narrowing my search to Ohio newspapers, and my very first result was more than I had hoped for.<\/p>\n

\"Magnificent<\/a>
Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), 4 February 1893, page 1<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There in the fourth paragraph as \u201cItem 2\u201d were John\u2019s specific legacies to his family members, and he nicely listed each of his brothers and sisters\u2014which included Ann Walker!<\/p>\n

I researched further and soon found a very complete article which, while reporting John Huntington\u2019s death in London, England, contained the subheading that included this information: \u201cOne of the First Men to Make a Fortune from The Standard Oil Company.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>
New York Tribune (New York, New York), 12 January 1893, page 5<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This article also contained reports of his birth date, town, father, his father\u2019s occupation, his living children, and even the report of how his son Arthur had been killed by a train. This article helped me discover the birth records for John Huntington in the United Kingdom, his marriage record, and records for several of his family members.<\/p>\n

Out of interest, I searched the newspapers to see if there was an account of the death of Arthur Huntington as mentioned in the New York Tribune<\/em>. I discovered a gruesome, but complete, accounting of the accident that led to his death.<\/p>\n

\"Both<\/a>
Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), 26 April 1891, page 2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have to admit the headline \u201cBoth Legs Cut Off\u201d sent shivers through me. The next day, on 27 April 1891, the Plain Dealer<\/em> reported the grim news that Arthur had died from his extensive injuries.<\/p>\n

In need of some more cheerful news to finish my day\u2019s research, I came across a delightful article. It reported that the mayor of Cleveland, Newton Baker, was going to dedicate the Cleveland Museum of Art by sitting in the moonlight and having a slice of watermelon on the marble steps.<\/p>\n

\"Watermelon<\/a>
Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), 27 June 1915, page 13<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I remember walking up those steps many times, but I don\u2019t recall seeing any watermelon seeds!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scott Phillips researches old newspapers to find stories about a member of his extended family, the 19th century philanthropist John Huntington.<\/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":[12557],"tags":[4707,4709,4704,4698,4700,4710],"class_list":["post-4340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genealogy-stories","tag-ann-h-walker","tag-arthur-huntington","tag-frank-joseph-ptak","tag-john-huntington","tag-margaret-alice-walker","tag-newton-baker"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4340","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=4340"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88567,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4340\/revisions\/88567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}