My Trails into the Past

In the early days of my genealogy research journey, I learned from a small newspaper account that my great-grandfather had died in Sheridan, Wyoming. This was in the 1990s when research was done mostly by writing letters and sending self-addressed stamped envelopes. I found the address of the public library and sent off a request for his obituary. A week later, my SASE came back. I loved that time of researching in pre-Internet days of finding SASEs in the mailbox. This one was thicker than I expected. My mail did not include an obituary, but rather a long newspaper article about the death of my grandfather. It was an unusual death. He died from drinking carbolic acid. At first, I have to admit, I was kind of excited. This wasn’t a boring, everyday death. We have no famous people or people who have done remarkable things. When you find something unusual like this you want to share it. Sharing with my genealogy friends was fine. They all thought it was interesting. He had been t...