Just wanted to use this week’s post to offer an official and well-deserved “Thank You” to some people who’ve made valuable contributions to our project over the past several weeks:
THANKS FOR THE HELPING HANDS!
Thanks to Lisa Berenschot and Sommer Fain, our student assistants who performed much of the page collation work during the academic year that was just completed. Now that summer is here, Lisa and Sommer have both accepted out-of-state internships in their fields of study. Congratulations and good luck!
Thanks to Isolde Raftery, our historic newspaper essayist. Isolde has recently completed researching and writing the essays for all NDNP titles included phase one of our project. A graduate student of Journalism, Isolde is spending the summer living and working in New York City.
Thanks to Karen Nitz, librarian in the Western History Room in the Public Library in Burns, Oregon. Karen provided invaluable assistance to Isolde when she was researching the history of the Burns Times-Herald — in particular, she helped us find the public records that cleared up the mystery of C.A. Byrd’s first name (see earlier blog post dated April 16th for more details.)
Finally, thanks to Gary Dielman, President of the Baker County Library Board and member of our ODNP Advisory Board. Gary helped us by researching Baker County records for information on J.W. Connella, another nineteenth-century Oregon newspaperman we knew only by his initials. Gary’s work provided the vital clues that helped us solve this one.
(The subject’s full name turned out to be James Wright Connella. Here’s a link to Connella’s genealogy page at RootsWeb. Key for our purposes was the following passage: “1900 Federal Census in North Sumpter Precinct, Baker County, Oregon, lists James W Connella, age 40, born January 1860 in Alabama, father born Virginia, mother born Alabama, occupation Editorial [illegible word] Paper, residing as a lodger in the home of Charles Marsh and his wife Eva — Marsh’s occupation is Editor [illegible word] Paper”)
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