Thomas Musgrave. Death help please. Pennsylvania.

[coombs]

I found out that Margaret Prosser nee Musgrave married a William Miller in about 1915 and is on the 1920 US census in Carnegie, Pittsburgh and in Scott, Allegheny in 1930 aged 59.

Now I want to find her death and an obituary as that may lead to Thomas's death.

BTW I am in America in Chicago and have been doing a bit of research at the Newberry Library and will return tomorrow. I dont know if I will have time to apply for Thomas death cert and have it shipped to the UK as I return to England on Friday morning.

[coombs]

UPDATE:

On the Allegheny websites in Chartres?? cemetery in Carnegie it has a Margaret Prosser Miller b1871 died 1961. Possibly my Margaret. This leads to a year of death and an easier search for an obituary.

She says she was naturalised, probably when she was Margaret Prosser but cannot seem to find her naturalisation at all and wonder if Johnnyboy or anyone else can help?

[johnnyboy]

UPDATE:

On the Allegheny websites in Chartres?? cemetery in Carnegie it has a Margaret Prosser Miller b1871 died 1961. Possibly my Margaret. This leads to a year of death and an easier search for an obituary.

She says she was naturalised, probably when she was Margaret Prosser but cannot seem to find her naturalisation at all and wonder if Johnnyboy or anyone else can help?

Hi Ben: I hope you had a nice stay in Chicago.

Rootschat no longer notifies me of replies to this topic. I happened to find it by logging in today.

To clarify the spelling: The cemetery where Margaret Prosser Miller is buried is Chartiers Cemetery. It is located in Carnegie, Pennsylvania. Since I know Carnegie, I know the cemetery. But I couldn't find much in the way of information online for contacting it.

I was able to track down the burial index for Chartiers Cemetery that you seem to have seen--maintained by N. Meinert at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~njm1/charm.htm

I found the listing for Margaret. But I did not notice any information about her naturalization. If you saw that information on another website, let me know what it is, so that I can look at it.

If Margaret did naturalize, she probably did so in Pittsburgh, which is only a few miles away, at either a Pennsylvania state court or a U.S. federal court. The U.S. court naturalizations in Pittsburgh are on Ancestry as part of a database on naturalizations in Western Pennsylvania--if anyone wants to check. Not sure where the state court naturalization records are kept. Probably in the offices of Allegheny County, since state courts in Pennsylvania operate at the county level.

If Google had not ended support of their newspaper archive, it would have been relatively easy to search the Pittsburgh newspapers for Margaret's obituary. You can still access the old newspapers, but you have to browse each issue--365 per year. There's no other way to do it.

If you want, I can supply you with the link to access the Pittsburgh Press and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from 1961.

Regards,
John 

[coombs]

Hi Johnnyboy.

In the 1920 census she said she was naturalised in 1898 but her then husband says the same year. William Miller. In 1898 Margaret was Margaret Prosser.

Yes if you could provide me with a link to those Pittsburgh newspapers.

Ben

[johnnyboy]

Hi Ben: Here's the link to Google's News Archive for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=gL9scSG3K_gC

I hope the ".com" ending works in the U.K.  It's best if you open a new tab for each link that you click, so that you don't lose the original link.

When you get to the web page, just type 1961 into the box marked Date. That will take you to a page with the individual months for the Post-Gazette in 1961. Click "View all" to see all of a particular month's issues.

The page number for death notices/obits in the Post-Gazette is listed in the index, which is usually on page one or two.

Let me know how you get on.

If I locate where 1898 naturalizations might be, I'll post the info.

John 

[coombs]

Hi Johnny

I did read you said that you think Pittsburgh naturalisations are not on Ancestry?

I did find a Google Search of the archives of those newspapers but can that be relied on? You could type in a particular word and it would search the archive for you.

Ben

[johnnyboy]

I did read you said that you think Pittsburgh naturalisations are not on Ancestry?

HI Ben: Some of them are and some of them are not. It depends on the court in which someone was naturalized.

Naturalizations were done in a state court (for example, Pennsylvania) or in a U.S. federal court in a particular state (in this case in Pennsylvania). The distinction between the the two court systems is not important for this discussion of naturalizations. Naturalization is a federal procedure that can be done in any court for convenience sake (mostly because of the great distances that might have to be traveled to get to a U.S. federal court. One goes through exactly the same naturalization process in either court.

Ancestry has Pennsylvania naturalizations done in the U.S court only. Pennsylvania's U.S. court has three geographic districts (as well as subdistricts that are not relevant to this post). The three are the Western District of Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh), the Middle District of Pennsylvania (Harrisburg), and the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia.

The Western District of Pennsylvania has the naturalizations for Pittsburgh and the all of the areas in which Thomas Musgrave and all of his descendants lived.

But even the district distinction isn't important, since all of the Pennsylvania naturalizations done in the U.S. court are in the same database on Ancestry.

On the other hand: To see the naturalizations done in a state court in Pennsylvania, one has to start at the county level--that is, Allegheny County or Washington County, etc. Those naturalizations are pretty much still in paper form at the respective county's courthouse. I've only seen one Pennsylvania county that has any naturalization index or records online.

John 

[johnnyboy]

I did find a Google Search of the archives of those newspapers but can that be relied on? You could type in a particular word and it would search the archive for you.

I think that the search functions on the Google News Archive no longer work. Google has stopped supporting the News Archive. It is simply leaving the digitized newspapers on its servers. If people want to search them, it's by browsing only, which is why I mentioned that page 1 or page 2 of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had the page number for where that day's death notices.

Maybe Shelly knows different than I do.

John 

[shellyesq]

The Google News Archives' usability seems to be hit or miss lately.  I find that if you go on the regular Google News area (http://news.google.com/nwshp?ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4ADSA_enUS408US410&hl=en&tab=wn) and search for something, the results page will give the option of the Archives on the left side of the page and then you can search further from there.