Resources: Looking for relatives?

Two newspaper archives will help you find details on relatives known and suspected: www.newspaperarchives.com (fee-based) and a new Google service: www.news.google.com/archivesearch.

The Google service returns results from newspapers and other sources, such as World War I Registrations (Ancestry.com), and results from newspaperarchives.com, which cannot be searched directly until you sign up with that Web site.

How can it help you?

With the new Google feature, I found not only myriad Tollin, Talalay, Talalaj, Talalai individuals, but in addition to the previously known WWI registrations, I learned about a relative who got a speeding ticket in 1958, obits containing brand-new details on spouses and families, court cases, patents, social notes, awards and much more.

On the Dardashti side, I not only found a long list of my past articles, but the information that our architect cousin John in California had won a cooking contest in 1974 for his Persian chicken and much more.

You can choose "all dates" or search by specific decades.

With the 219 results for Talalay and 318 for Dardashti on newspaperarchives.com, however, I couldn't access them until I signed up. As far as I can determine, the Google search showed all of that site's relevant listings.

Using Google, the newspaperarchives.com results will show in a new window. It takes a bit of time as all the text on the page must be scrolled through, but at least the name and the context can be seen.

Some earlier papers on Google show numerous OCR scanning errors in the search results -- so many that some entries look like a foreign language. However, the name being searched is in bold; you can click on the search and look in the text box. Just wear your thinking cap to decipher what it really says.

Well worth a search. Happy hunting!

And thanks to Dick Eastman who provided the Google link!