I recently signed up for a free 7 day trial of Newspaper.com to see if I like it. I’ll try it out here. I have been interested in a good newspaper website. However, I watched a recent video on bringing famiiles forward that got me to try this trial.
Boston Ancestors
Some of my ancestors who lived in the Boston area were Frazer, Clarke and McMaster. I am a bit stuck on my Clarke ancestors. I have that an early Clarke, Celia married Charles McGarry and lived in Boston.
Clarke
Celia married Charles McGarry:
This appears to be his funeral record:
Although this gives some interesting information, there appears to be no family information other than the fact that the McGarry family lot was in Dorchester.
Here is another Newspaper entry I found through Ancestry which is affiliated with Newspaper.com:
This is also from the Boston Globe but on January 20, 1894. I wasn’t able to find any newpaper entries for Celia. However, searching for a female with a married and maiden name is more difficult. I see that Celia aslo went by Cecilia or Sadie which makes searching difficult.
Margaret Clarke Frazer
I was able to find an entry for Margaret in the Boston Globe on Saturday, September 20, 1902, but only by spelling her married name the wrong way:
I was determined to find this entry as I knew that it existed – having found this entry before.
Here is a map that I took from an earlier Blog:
The lower circle was where my great-grandfather was a clerk around 1891 and 1892. This was at 1961 Washington Street. Note that Newcomb Street where Margaret’s funeral service was held, was very close to this circle.
Funeral Announcement for Catherine Clarke’s Husband William McMaster
This was from the Thursday May 4, 1899 edition of the Boston Globe. For some reason, I had not picked up that William was living at Northampton Street. Here is William’s death record:
William was a Chef working at ‘Quincy Houses’. In my Walking the Streets of Boston Blog I had William at Gainborough Street in 1893. He appeared to move in there when my great-grandfather (William’s nephew) moved out.
William moved from Camden Street to Gainsborough Street to Northampton Street:
Northampton is one Street North of Camden which I have circled in blue above. So while I am not finding out a lot about the Clarke family, I am finding out where the William McMaster family lived (with his Clarke wife). Because Northeastern University is in this area now, the streets will look a bit different.
This raises the question of what happened to this family after William McMaster died? Here is the 1900 Census:
The family moved to 103 Sterling Street. Sterling can be seen in an image I have already shown:
Sterling is inside the yellowish circle above.
Celia Clarke and Edward McMaster
Here are Edward and Celia in 1920:
This extended McMaster family was living in Boston. At this time, Edward gave his birth as Scotland and Celia gave her birthplace as England. However, I believe that they both were from Ireland. They also go by McMasters with an ‘s’ now. Here is some more information about Edward posted at Ancestry:
Edward’s mother’s name is given as Mary Bolles. I am not finding much in newspaper.com on this family:
However, I can start to fill in some details about the family. For example, Alice J McMasters married on April 25, 1906:
I don’t think that this Clarke was related to the other Clarkes.
Summary and Conclusions
- Newspaper.com has a good selection of newspapers for my use – which for now has been a few papers in the Boston area
- Searching these papers is a bit difficult due to variations and mistakes in the spelling of names.
- There were also difficulties in searching for women. This is probably due to the fact that historically women were not mentioned as much in newspapers.
- So far, looking at newspapers.com has provided some interesting information and shown connections, but it has not broken through any of the older brick walls.
- The newspaper web site has just given a different angle to the research and goes well with other research I have done.