{"id":5556,"date":"2013-12-10T16:38:02","date_gmt":"2013-12-10T16:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=5556"},"modified":"2021-04-21T11:10:50","modified_gmt":"2021-04-21T15:10:50","slug":"death-horses-meteors-my-mcneil-family-history-discoveries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/death-horses-meteors-my-mcneil-family-history-discoveries.html","title":{"rendered":"Death, Horses & Meteors: My McNeil Family History Discoveries"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction<\/em><\/strong>: In this article, Gena Philibert-Ortega searches old newspapers to find some details about the daily life of her ancestor John C. McNeil. Gena is a genealogist and author of the book \u201cFrom the Family Kitchen.<\/span>\u201d
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Some of my favorite things about researching family history in old newspapers are the surprises you can find about an ancestor\u2019s daily life. Take for example my McNeil ancestors, John C. McNeil (1823-1909) and his wife Mary Ann Smith McNeil (1853-1944) (actually his 3rd wife; he was a polygamist and had two other wives simultaneously). I\u2019m always interested in researching their lives and learning more about how history impacted them as they separately immigrated to the United States and lived in various states and countries, including Utah, Arizona and Mexico.<\/p>\n

The McNeils are a family that I actually know quite a bit about, not just because of my own searching but from the research I inherited from my maternal grandmother (John and Mary Ann were her grandparents), my aunts, and my cousins. One of the future family history projects I\u2019ve planned is to take the family history narratives that have been compiled about this McNeil family and add much-needed source citations. Obviously historical newspaper research can help with this.<\/p>\n

James Hibbert McNeil\u2019s Death Notice<\/strong><\/p>\n

For example, one family history narrative I inherited mentions their infant son James Hibbert McNeil dying during a scarlet fever epidemic in 1886. I found a short mortuary notice in GenealogyBank\u2019s Historical Newspaper Archives<\/a> that confirmed that he died of scarlet fever. Although the family was living in Arizona at the time, I found the death notice in a Utah newspaper.<\/p>\n

\"death<\/a>
Deseret News (Salt Lake City, Utah), 1 September 1886, page 528<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Horse Thievery at the McNeil Farm<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written previously on the GenealogyBank Blog about Mary Ann and how her name was published in newspapers across the United States due to her numerous descendants fighting in World War II. (For my previous article, please see The Polygamist\u2019s Wife: The Story of My Favorite Ancestor Mary Ann<\/a>.) I started to wonder what other newspapers articles I could find for this family. Were there surprises yet to be uncovered?<\/p>\n

So I started on my research quest. One thing I\u2019ve learned over the years is that you can find family history information in any part of a newspaper: letters to the editor, advertisements, even weather bulletins. Newspaper advertisements, for example, can contain much more information than simply marketing a product to consumers\u2014they can include the names of our ancestors. In this case I made a marvelous discovery: I found a newspaper advertisement that included where John was living at the time. This ad describes three horses \u201ctaken up\u201d (stolen) from the McNeil\u2019s farm in Bountiful, Utah.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Deseret News (Salt Lake City, Utah), 13 October 1869, page 432<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Old Weather Reports Include Meteors!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Continuing on with my family search in Utah and Arizona newspapers (places where I know they lived), I was surprised to find some articles that provided John\u2019s weather reports for Show Low, Arizona. These weather reports were very brief mentions of how the local weather was, included in a larger state weather report published in the newspaper. Several men in various parts of Arizona worked as weather reporters for their area and provided these reports\u2014and my ancestor John McNeil was one of them.<\/p>\n

\"weather<\/a>
Weekly Phoenix Herald (Phoenix, Arizona), 24 February 1898, page 4<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But amidst a few seemingly common weather reports from John, I found this old one from February 1897 in which he reports seeing a meteor. Other witnesses in this report also provided a description of this anomaly.<\/p>\n

\"report<\/a>
Weekly Phoenix Herald (Phoenix, Arizona), 25 February 1897, page 2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I imagine reporting on the weather every month may not have been very exciting, but a meteor! That would have added a little excitement to John\u2019s routine.<\/p>\n

I was curious about this meteor and continued my search in GenealogyBank\u2019s Arizona newspapers<\/a>. I soon found other descriptions of that meteor, including this one from a Prescott, Arizona, newspaper. The article reports about the meteor: \u201cIt was very near the earth and lighted up the entire heavens. It was accompanied by a roaring noise.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"report<\/a>
Weekly Journal Miner (Prescott, Arizona), 27 January 1897, page 3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Unexpected Finds in Newspapers<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no doubt that newspapers provide us a glimpse of our ancestors that we won\u2019t find in other records. What do I like best about newspapers? You can find the unexpected. You come face to face with the everyday lives of your ancestors and this only keeps getting better as more newspapers are digitized. Can\u2019t find anything about your ancestor\u2019s story? Keep looking; one day you will be surprised at what you find out about your family\u2019s past.<\/p>\n

Genealogy Search Tip<\/em><\/strong>: Don\u2019t always go into newspaper research expecting to find a certain type of article. Instead, search on a time period. If you only look for obituaries, most likely that\u2019s all you will find. As I searched for John McNeil I searched in the states where he lived and for the years he was alive, not expecting to find just one type of article.<\/p>\n

And sure enough, I was not disappointed. In a newspaper obituary, an advertisement, and some weather reports, I got some of those precious glimpses into John\u2019s life that help us get to know the names on our family tree as real people with real lives.<\/p>\n

Start searching GenealogyBank\u2019s Historical Newspaper Archives<\/a> today, and see what small details about your own ancestors\u2019 lives you can find!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this article, Gena Philibert-Ortega searches old newspapers to find some details about the daily life of her ancestor John C. McNeil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":36805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12557],"tags":[12,2020],"class_list":["post-5556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genealogy-stories","tag-genealogy","tag-newspaper-archives"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/photo-1210-2013-featured-graphic-meteor.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5556","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\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70441,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5556\/revisions\/70441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}