The Brown County Genealogical Society held its July 16 meeting with 15 members and guests present, opening with President Ray Thieme, followed by approval of June meeting minutes and the June treasurer’s report.
Cindy Cruz of the Topeka Genealogical Society delivered a program focused on newspaper research, encouraging attendees to explore multiple online resources such as the Library of Congress, Elephind, Newspapers.com, Chronicling America, and Google. She also described local “neighborhood news” in old newspapers as a historical equivalent to social media, and advised looking for clues including relatives, street addresses, church news, natural disasters, and special editions. Cruz noted the importance of watching for surname misspellings and recommended skimming entire issues because OCR can misread newspaper text.
The society’s next meeting will be held at its library on Aug. 20. The August program will be presented by Adam Hodge of the Kansas State Historical Society.