One of the local County libraries where a lot of my ancestors lived has made newspaper archives available on-line with a library card. Previously, I had done some searching on GenealogyBank.com and thought I had found all I was going to find since the same newspaper was available there. But I realized that (I guess) the indexing and OCR process was different because I found very different information.
I found an article about my great-great grandmother falling through a sky light in the family fruit and candy store. She was not badly injured but as was the habit of the day, the article pointed out that although many others had walked on that skylight, it probably gave way due to her weight.
Another interesting series of articles also involved a woman who had the same name as my g-g grandmother. Apparently this other woman and her friend committed slander against a neighbor by stating that her children knew nothing of their father. Sounds pretty petty by today’s standards but in 1887 it was a big enough deal that several follow up articles had a clarification that the Rose Pisani in he article WAS NOT the wife of Massimo Pisani ( my g-g grandfather).
I knew that my maternal grandfather and several of his brothers drove streetcars and then later buses in Baltimore City. The youngest of the brothers had joked to me once that he also drove a bus briefly but after only a few months, several accidents convinced him that he should probably find another profession. He joined the army. I was able to verify that he was involved in several accidents but I also found that none of my transit driving ancestors apparently were very good drivers as they also were involved in several accidents. In fact, my grandfather ran over someone with a streetcar one night on a dark part of the tracks, but it was later determined that the man had already gotten killed by being run over by another streetcar before my grandfather hit him.
Going back even further to the 1850s, my 4th great grandfather spent much of his time cleaning up the chaos caused by his 3rd wife. He finally divorced, but not before a long line of people and businesses demanded repayment for goods and services that had been stolen by his wife.
On a positive side, I found articles written about my great grandfather and his brothers helping to save people and property during the Great Fire in 1904. All 3 of them were teenagers at the time.
I have been happily engrossed in searching the papers for stories of my ancestors, it sure beats going to the library and having to know what dates you wanted to search on microfilm. Also, lesson learned, there may be the same resources on different sites but the way those resources are indexed and OCR’ed could be different, resulting on very different findings.
Aunt Barb's Papers 