Genealogy Corner - September 2023
By: Corvid G.
Did you know that as an Ida Rupp Public Library member, you have access to a host of genealogy resources? Most of them can be used from the comfort of your personal computer, but please note that a few require you to be in the library to utilize. For a full list of what is available to you for genealogy purposes, please visit: https://www.idarupp.org/genealogy.
My personal favorite resources are the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museum’s Ohio Obituary Index, which is available for use anywhere, and idarupp.newspapers.com, which houses our digitized microfilm and must be used in the library. Using these resources in conjunction, I have been able to update the Ohio Obituary Index with the obituaries published in The Port Clinton Herald and Republican dating back to the early 1900s. In doing this, I am personally fulfilled by the knowledge that I am actively helping today’s society connect with yesterday’s loved ones. In this blog post, I will talk a bit about how you can use these resources to find more information about family who have passed on, and I will be using my father, Derek Griggs, as my example.
It is immensely helpful to have important information like year of death and first name, but even if you only have a last name to go on, you can begin your search. The more specific information you have at your disposal, the better! The good news is these resources can be used to gain more details, even with minimal recorded notes on your family. Since I know multiple details, I was able to get one result from the search engine, and I know it is the correct one. If you are searching for a more common name like William Johnson, and are unsure of death year, be prepared to sift through many many more pages of results and meet a lot of dead ends. When that happens, put on your metaphorical researching gloves and get digging!
Now that I have found the appropriate listing for my dad, I can now click ‘view’ on the left for more details and find out what Ohio newspapers published his obituary. Once you see which newspapers had the listings, you can choose to purchase the ‘obit source’ from the Hayes Presidential Library. (Their website has details on how to order these obit sources if Hayes does not own them.) The fees are low and pay for the effort to find them, as many of the old newspapers are on microfilm and require special care to access. I will not be purchasing the obituary listing today, but I wanted to show that this was an option! The fee is for each individual obituary, so if your loved one has an article in multiple different papers, you will need to pay for each of them, not one flat rate.
With the plethora of genealogy resources available to you as a library cardholder, I know you will have fun in your quest for knowledge! There are a few librarians here at Ida Rupp that get really excited to talk about genealogy, our lovely director Lindsay being one of them. Feel free to stop at the desk and chat with us any time; we can help you gain confidence on starting your search!
