Friday Find

Marjorie Louise Machado

Today's find from my CRAWFORD files is another obituary from a Dodge City newspaper, this one for Marjorie Louise Machado. Marjorie was the daughter of my great-aunt Helen Marjorie Crawford Horton, making Marjorie my first cousin once removed.

Like much of my early genealogy research, my file contains a handwritten transcription rather than a copy of the actual newspaper article. The notation "KHS Newspapers" on the page tells me that I viewed the Dodge City Daily Globe on microfilm at the Kansas Historical Society.

Marjorie H. Machade—Rites Here Monday A.M.

Graveside services for Mrs. Marjorie Horton Machade, formerly of Dodge City, who died last week in Phoenix, Ariz., will be conducted by Rev. Arlon G. Ebright at 10 a.m. Monday in Maple Grove Cemetery. The body will lie in state at the Hulpieu-Swain Funeral Home until 9:45 Mon.

Besides her parents and her 2 children, Mrs. Machade is survived by a brother and a sister. Mrs. Josie Crawford of Dodge City is her grandmother and she was a niece of Leon Crawford.

Source notation on page:
Dodge City Daily Globe, Sat., Sept. 19, 1953, p. 1, col. 4.

Although brief, this obituary contains several useful pieces of family information. It identifies Marjorie's grandmother as Josie Crawford and her uncle as Leon Crawford, while also noting that she was survived by her parents, two children, a brother, and a sister.

Since the Internet and newspaper digitization have made it much easier to access newspapers from across the country, I decided to search Newspapers.com for additional information about Marjorie. In particular, I wanted to learn more about her second marriage.

A search turned up the September 18, 1949, issue of the San Antonio Light. Its Vital Statistics column included the following marriage license:

Marriage Licenses

Ralph S. Machado; Marjorie Louise Brock

This small newspaper entry helped me in two ways. It narrowed down the date of Marjorie's second marriage and, more importantly, provided the full name of her second husband, Ralph S. Machado, information I had not previously recorded.

And that is what makes revisiting old genealogy files worthwhile.

When I originally researched Marjorie, finding her obituary meant traveling to the Kansas Historical Society, locating the correct roll of microfilm, scrolling through the newspaper, and copying the article by hand. At the time, that obituary may have seemed like the end of the search.

Today, it can be the beginning of a new search.

Digitized newspapers allow me to take names and clues from those old handwritten notes and search newspapers from other cities and states. In this case, an obituary from Dodge City led me to a marriage record published four years earlier in San Antonio.

Sometimes a Friday Find isn't really something newly discovered. Sometimes it is an old find that, thanks to new resources, leads to something new.