This one included. Everyone loves to see their name in the paper, except in the OBITUARY COLUMN! What is the old saying? “I get the morning paper and read the obituaries first to see if I am there. If I’m not, it’s a good start to the day.” We are lucky enough to live in a county where local newspapers have been kept and indexed for most of the years since Meeker and Rangely sprouted. Many places across the country are not so well off. A lot of old editions were stored poorly in basements where they molded. Some disappeared all together in paper drives during World War II. In the last decade or so, there has been considerable effort made to digitally scan the old papers and make them searchable online. www/coloradohistoricnewspapers.org boosts of two million pages from 600 newspapers. This is a free site. There are several large subscription-based sources for national coverage. Ancestry.com has a collection of obituaries and newspapers. The large databases can be overwhelming unless you have an unusual name or can filter for time and place. For our local stuff, the library in Meeker has produced an extensive index to obituaries in RBC. I consider that a huge blessing. The actual obituaries are available at the library by request and also at the White River Museum. Keep in mind obituaries are often published for people who died far away from RBC. The Herald Times website archive is searchable for the last 20 years and you can read the entire text.
A well written obituary will include real names and nicknames; birth dates and places; parents, spouses, children, and grandchildren. The editor will separate living relatives [survivors] from deceased. Often times mentioning spouses of the descendants and current locations. These details allow you to record in your family tree marriages, spouses and some things you won’t find in census or government records. Be sure to make a notation of descendant’s homes. It is a clue where to find more records. For deceased names, record them in your tree as ‘died before_____”. Obituaries can be rich in those family stories we love to collect. I will caution you take everything with a grain of salt. It can be hard to distinguish natural children and brothers and sisters from half-brothers, adoptions and many details are from one person’s memory, which may be disconnected from reality. If you are really lucky as a researcher, you may have that special maiden aunt somewhere who has dutifully stashed obits in a shoebox.
REMEMBER, IF YOU DON’T FIND YOUR OWN OBITUARY, THAT MEANS YOU ARE ALIVE ENOUGH TO KEEP SEARCHING FOR OTHERS.
By ED PECK
Special to the Herald Times
