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Finding Obits

June 6, 2025

As a volunteer researcher, I’ve received lots of requests for obituary look ups over the years. If the requester had a date of death, checking in the local papers for an obit was a simple matter.

 

When I began my volunteering, most of the local historic newspapers were not digitized. They were available on microfilm, so a research request usually meant a trip to the public library.

 

Nowadays, things have changed. Many historic newspapers have been digitized. I still get requests for obituary look ups, but I rarely need to leave home to fill them. State historic newspaper projects, websites such as Genealogy Bank and Newspapers.com, and local genealogy society websites contain a wealth of online obituaries.

 

If you’re considering requesting an obituary look up, do some searching on your own first. Many states have free historic newspaper projects. Just google “historic newspaper project” and the state name to access them. Another free newspaper website is the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America project. Chronicling America has newspapers from all fifty states, although not all newspapers and dates for each state are covered. State newspaper projects and Chronicling America will usually not contain newspapers published after the early 1960s.

 

Another place to check for obituaries online is at local genealogical society websites. Some societies have digitized runs of local obituaries. For example, the Larimer County Genealogical Society website contains obituaries from 1988 to 2002. It is also worth checking with the public library for digitized obituaries for a local area.

 

There are also pay per view sites which contain obits. Newspapers.com is my favorite because of the ease of searching and the broad coverage they offer. Other newspaper specific websites include GenealogyBank.com and NewspaperArchive.com. All three websites offer free trial subscriptions. If you are doing a lot of research in an area, you may want to pay for a longer subscription. It’s a good idea to check these websites in advance to see whether they offer the newspapers and dates you need before you subscribe.

 

There’s nothing more satisfying than finding a record yourself for an ancestor. It gives you a great feeling of accomplishment. However, once you have unsuccessfully exhausted the possibilities available to you, it’s time to get some help. Fortunately, local societies usually have a researcher who may be more knowledgeable about local resources than you are.

 

I do that kind of research for the Larimer County Genealogical Society, and I’d be glad to hear from you if you need some help.

 

Carol Stetser

Researcher

Larimer County Genealogical Society

Kristiania

May 30, 2025

You never know what you’ll find when you do genealogy. Just this week I realized that I’ve never really known the name of the city where my paternal grandmother grew up and lived until she was twenty-seven. I thought I knew that it was Oslo, Norway. Turns out I was wrong.

 

My paternal grandmother, Thea Rustad, was born just outside of Oslo. When she was a toddler, the family moved into the city. Thea grew up in the city and lived there until she immigrated to the United States in 1914.

 

Thea married Victor Fernelius in 1918, and she lived the remainder of her life on the Fernelius Family Farm at the mouth of Weber Canyon in Utah. Her children and grandchildren were born there. For them, Thea’s urban life in Norway was the stuff of fairy tales. Thea entertained the grandchildren with tales of her childhood in the big city.

 

The Rustad Family lived in a series of apartments in the older section of Oslo. Most of the apartment buildings were large with four or five stories. The Rustad’s usually lived on one of the upper floors. One of Thea’s stories was about her passion for reading. After everyone else was asleep, she often crept out the window to sit on the fire escape. There was a streetlight near the window, and Thea would snuggle into a shawl and read by its light for hours.

 

As she grew older, Thea was a good student. She decided that she wanted to continue her schooling and become a teacher. Her father promised that he’d find the money for her further education. It was not to be. Thea’s mother died of consumption when Thea was only ten years old. By the time she was fourteen, her father and older brother had also died of the disease.

 

When their father died, Thea’s youngest brother was only seven years old. Her older sisters were determined that the family should stick together. The older children got jobs to ensure that the family could stay in their apartment. There was no money for Thea’s further education. She became a salesclerk instead of a teacher.

 

When Thea told these stories of her youth, she always referred to her hometown as Oslo. My cousins and I grew up telling everyone that our grandmother was from Oslo. Most of the family trees on the internet list her family as being from Oslo. I recently learned that all of us were wrong. When my grandmother lived there, the capitol of Norway was not Oslo, although it was the same city.

 

The city was founded in 1040. It was called Ánslo then. In 1624, during King Christian IV’s reign, a fire destroyed much of the city. The king was instrumental in rebuilding the city, and the city’s name was changed to honor him. Christiania became Kristiania in 1877 due to an official spelling reform.

 

Kristiania’s name was changed to Oslo in 1925 – one hundred years ago this year. The city is planning a big celebration of the name change this summer. However,during the entire time that my grandmother lived there, there was no Oslo. She lived in Kristiania. Her younger siblings were born there. Her parents died there. She boarded a ship to America from Kristiania.

 

My grandmother often talked of her life in Norway. Surprisingly, she never mentioned the name Kristiania even once. She always referred to her life in Oslo.

 

By the time Oslo came into being, Thea had lived in Utah for more than a decade. I don’t know why she never used the name Kristiania. It’s a mystery that probably will go unsolved.

 

Carol Stetser

Researcher

Larimer County Genealogical Society

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Genealogy and Yellow Roses

May 23, 2025

One of my earliest memories is the yellow roses that grew at our town cemetery. This is where my grandparents, great grandparents and assorted aunts, uncles and cousins are buried. Every Memorial Day, we visited the cemetery.

 

It was overrun with cheat grass and cacti, but here and there a huge clump of rose briars survived in the dry, sandy soil. In May, the prickly bushes would be covered with semi-double yellow blossoms. I would always brave the thorns to pick a handful of roses to place on my grandparents’ graves.

 

I had no idea what the name of those roses was, but I noticed that many of the older houses in town also had clumps of them in their yards. The house where my great grandmother Maria Lindberg Fernelius had lived had a huge bush leaning over the fence.

 

When I grew up, I fell in love with genealogy. I delved into the stories of my ancestors’ lives – including that great grandmother of the yellow roses. I found several biographical sketches about her in the Special Collections of the University of Utah Marriott Library. The sketches all mentioned that my Great Grandmother Fernelius loved flowers, especially yellow roses.

 

I, too, loved flowers and decided that I needed to find out the name of the rose my great grandmother had loved so much. By then, the cemetery where I’d picked the yellow roses had become gentrified, and the yellow roses were long gone. Most of the older houses had been replaced by newer ones. They had small yards unsuited to huge brambly rosebushes.

 

However, I’m a genealogist so I decided to do what I do best: research. I found out that the yellow roses were called Harrison’s (or Harison’s) yellow. They had been hybridized in the 1830s by a reclusive bachelor lawyer from New York City named George Folliott Harison. A plantsman from the same area took cuttings and released the rose to nurseries.

 

The rose became very popular since yellow was an unusual color for roses at the time. It was also a very tough bush, so tough that cuttings were carried along in the wagons that headed west. The rose thrived wherever it was planted, and it became known as the Oregon Trail Rose and the Yellow Rose of Texas. Bushes can be found all over the West, particularly in harsh areas where other roses won’t grow. It seems to thrive on neglect and bloom every year in deserted farmyards and along roadsides.

 

If your ancestors came from anywhere in the West, chances are that your ancestors grew Harison’s Yellow roses too. Nowadays, Harison’s Yellow is available at many plant nurseries. If you buy one, you will have a living memorial to your ancestors.

 

Every year around Memorial Day, the roses will put on a show of yellow blooms. People will stop on their walks and ask you what that spectacular plant is. I know because I have a couple of Harison’s Yellow Roses, just like my great grandmother did. They’re my favorite flowers too.

 

Carol Stetser

Researcher

Larimer County Genealogical Society