Description

Genealogical research guides stress
the importance of local newspapers
as a source of valuable family
history data, but many of us tend to
ignore good advice. I know I did until
an inscription on a gravestone in a
Charlottetown cemetery prompted me
to look for information in a newspaper:
James Flanagan/ born 1860
drowned 1918/ through loss of
the S.S. Sophia.
I hadn't been able to learn much about
James from other sources. I knew his
date of birth from a church record of
baptisms, and I knew he was a blacksmith
from a cameo appearance on the
1881 census, but that was all. The
generation that might have known
about the circumstances of James's
death was gone so, reluctantly, I decided
to search the pages of a 1918 newspaper.