Using Newspapers to Check a Family Story

     A number of years ago my Dad, Lester Albertson, told me that his Smalley grandparents had come from Kansas to Halsey, Oregon, for a visit in about 1917 because his grandmother was going to a national DAR convention in Portland. I doubted that it was completely correct because I had no record that she had belonged to the DAR. However, her obituary did say that she was a member of the WRC, Women's Relief Corp, which is a women's group of the GAR, Civil War Veterans. Also my father was born in October 1907, so would have been only 9 or 10 in 1917 and maybe would not remember the date correctly. The Smalleys were my great-grandparents, so I wanted to know if my father's memory was accurate. I believed that newspaper research could help me answer this question.

    First I checked to find if there was any type of national convention in Portland for the Civil War Veterans organizations since I knew she had belonged to one of these. Using the University of Oregon website, Historic Oregon Newspapers, I did find some articles in The Oregon Daily Journal from Portland in 1918. On May 10th it reported that the GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) was planning for a national encampment in Portland that summer. There were women on the committee from the WRC, Ladies of the GAR and Daughters of Union Veterans. By August 9th the paper reported that there was entertainment planned for the delegates at the encampment to be held August 19th - 24th. Then on August 15th they wrote that 15,000 were expected to attend. There were large articles about the event on the front page on August 19th. One featured the WRC, stating their membership was 165,000 and they expected 500 or more of their members to attend the convention.

    Recently a newspaper from the town of Halsey, The Halsey Enterprise, came online at the U of O website, Historic Oregon Newspapers. It included papers from 1917 to 1920. So I could check for 1918. I searched for the name Albertson for a Halsey paper and found an article on August 29, 1918 which stated: "J. N. Elliott and family, who expected to start for Kansas Tuesday of last week, were delayed a day the arrival of relatives from the east - Mrs. E's parents, who are guests in the Albertson home." Mrs. Elliott was my grandmother's sister.

     Then I decided to check the subscription site, Newspapers.com, which has some newspapers for Goodland, Kansas. It was there I found the following article on August 15, 1918 in the Goodland Republic: "Mr. and Mrs. L. F. Smalley and Mr. and Mrs. H. M. Errington, of our county, departed Wednesday, for Portland, Oregon, to attend the National Encampment of the G.A.R.  Mr. and Mrs. Smalley will visit their two daughters, Mrs. O. J. Albertson and Mrs. J. N. Elliott, of Halsey, Oregon, before returning. They will be gone about two weeks."

     So by using three different newspapers, I can conclude that my father's grandparents did come to Oregon in 1918 to a national convention in Portland and visit family. Even if the convention was for the GAR, not DAR, and if was in 1918 rather than 1917, my father's story gave me the clues to discover an interesting
family event.