Newspaper archives told about my grandparents
Life happened, my father passed away, and gradually I began to feel a void because I knew almost nothing about his father, who had died suddenly when dad was only 7 years old. Dad never talked about him.
An acquaintance who had written about my grandmother's uncle suggested I might try searching newspaper archives. He told me about the Library of Congress' "Chronicling America" project aimed at digitizing America's newspapers. And then I also learned about a similar project at the University of California at Riverside focusing on California newspapers.
From one set of searches I found a detailed write-up of my grandparents' 1903 wedding in Prescott, Arizona. The article gave a brief account of Grandpa's blacksmithing business and Grandma's teaching career. It even gave a list of wedding guests and named the hotel where the reception was held. From a different search of the California newspapers I found three separate accounts of Grandpa's death.
From the articles I found and a couple of family letters I was able to piece together a timeline showing Grandpa abandoning his blacksmithing business, trying other jobs, running for political office, and finally moving in 1914 to California where he had a couple of sales jobs and business partnerships.