Friday July 8, 2016

It's overcast and I hope it rains. This will of course spoil my golf game but I'll sacrifice for the sake of some moisture for the soil.

Of course I have been immersing myself in the depths of newspapers.com and I must say I'm getting my money's worth. I think there must be better ways to search and as usual, not everything that is in the articles can actually be found in a search. Sometimes there are teasers and I can't get to the depth that I want. For example, there was a brief article that my great-grandfather, who was an alderman in Ottawa at that time, was bereaved. His older brother John who had moved to California, had died in an accident. No further information was available at that moment. Well, I don't know if further information was ever published but I certainly can't find it.

There are many newspapers in the database but I can't find one for Riverside, CA. I'm sure that the local newspaper would have covered an accidental death. John McGrath was a prominent builder whose arts and crafts style homes still look as good as the day he built them. I'm considering an appeal to the Southern California Genealogy Society to see if anyone there has access to a Riverside newspaper for the appropriate time period.

Now that it seems likely that there will be a visit next summer from our California connection, I think that I'll have to make a greater effort to find more McGraths in the Ottawa area. Party time! I will of course have my scanner on hand in hopes that people bring along family pictures - labelled!

Some days I'm torn between doing something useful - like housework - and digging deeper into the family roots. There are lots of resources that put context around the lives of our ancestors and it's interesting to think about what life was like for them. I sure wish they'd had cameras and a penchant for using them. With the paucity of photos my guess is that friends took pictures and gave copies to my rellies. I suppose that a huge bounty of pictures would just mean more work dealing with them. Imagine what future generations are going to think with all the digital images we have now.

Well, on with the day. I have to accomplish something!