Today's tip is going to be quick, since I have the feeling most people are digging out their stuffing recipes instead of searching obituaries this week.
I'm continuing to mine the Proquest Obituaries database for paid death notices in the Chicago Tribune and it's paying off handsomely: I now have 342 death notices corralled. In fact, I'm discovering that searching this database (or other newspaper databases like Chronicling America or NewspaperArchive.com) is kind of like eating potato chips because I can't search or eat just one.
Lately I've hit a streak of large families with mostly daughters and I have no idea what their married names would be. And when the surnames are common ones, it leads to search results in the thousands and that's just not helpful.
Some death notices or obits use the term "née," the French feminine past participle of naître, meaning to be born. So I structured a limited search on "nee Benson" and to my surprise Proquest loves the search term and returned wonderful results.
Double-click on the image below to see that it returned 144 results.
 |
| Limited search on "nee Benson" in ProQuest Obituaries |
From there, it was easy to search within the results window for the first names of my sibling sisters. Instead of hundreds of Esther Bensons, I had three and Ruttingh, Esther nee Benson was the one I was looking for.
 |
| Esther Benson search results |
In the same set of search results, I found Esther's sister May. So give a "nee (maiden surname)" search a try - you may get some excellent results!
That is a fabulous idea! Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI love this tip.
ReplyDeleteThanks...
Great tip! Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post! I know it's a year later. I would love to use the ProQuest Obituaries but I don't have access to a library that provides this service. It would be great though.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome, D. I wish ProQuest would smart up and offer individual licenses to this database. I'd be first in line to buy one.
ReplyDelete