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While editing the Winter 2016 issue of Mayflower Descendant, I searched the draft articles for additional genealogical facts for the families presented. Christopher Carter Lee’s article – “Elizabeth (Briggs) Shippey and her husband Ishmael of Raritan Landing, New Jersey, and their descendants through Specimens of Josiah Shippey” – traces several generations of John Alden descendants in New Jersey and New York. As surviving vital records for those two states are often scattered in various places, this article is a great example of gathering records from genealogy and newspaper websites, national genealogical repositories, and local libraries and genealogical societies.

My example regards the marriage of descendant Mary Richmond of New Brunswick, New Jersey. She married Robert Adrain, also of New Brunswick, and the two are buried there at Christ Church Episcopal Churchyard. I found the marriage listed twice on FamilySearch.org in their database “New Jersey Marriages, 1678-1985.”

Then, as I was conducting a microfilm search for film #542512 in the Family History Library catalog, I learned this specific record came from the collection “Vital statistics from Trenton newspapers, 1800-1900,” which was an alphabetical listing of newspaper abstracts. (Previous online newspaper searches for this marriage had turned up nothing.) My colleague at the Family History Library scanned the two nearly identical copies of this abstract, which were taken from The New Jersey State Gazette and the Emporium & True American.

The information given includes the date and page of the newspaper, which was not in the online database on FamilySearch, and neither database searched thus far had given the location. The Emporium & True American for this time period is available online at GenealogyBank.com, so when I could not find the marriage searching for Robert Adrain or Mary Richmond (or any combination thereof), I went specifically to the date of 11 July 1835, and from there to page 3, and found the following marriage announcement:

Obviously this announcement had much more information than the initial database on FamilySearch, including the place of marriage, the bride’s father’s name, and that he was deceased and had been a captain in the U.S. Army. The path to find this record involved an online search, then a microfilm scan, and then a second online search, and it was obviously worthwhile for the more detailed information shown above.