Heartland Genealogy

Chester Lighter's Obituary Have you ever gone back through your genealogy files and discovered information that you had collected years ago but never fully incorporated into your family tree? That is what happened when I came across my handwritten transcription of the obituary for Chester Lighter. Years ago, before digitized newspapers became widely available, I spent time at the Kansas State Historical Society in Topeka researching the Dodge City newspapers on microfilm. Instead of printing every article, I often copied the information by hand. Sometimes those notes were complete transcriptions, while other times they were simply summaries of the information I thought was important. One of those handwritten documents was the obituary for Chester B. Lighter, published in the Dodge City Daily Globe on Thursday, May 1, 1969. The Obituary According to my handwritten notes, Chester Lighter died on Wednesday, April 30, 1969, in Roscoe, Illinois, following his involvement in a highway a...

The Lighter Family and My Crawford and Ralston Ancestors Have you ever found a family history that connects to more than one branch of your family tree? That's exactly what happened when I looked at Genealogy and Family Histories of the Lighter and Wilhelm Families . I was interested in the Lighter family because of their connection to my Crawford ancestors. However, as I examined the pages listing the children and grandchildren of Jacob Henry Lighter, I realized that this family was connected to two different sides of my ancestral tree ! One connection was through my Crawford family, while the other was through my Ralston ancestors. The Lighter Family Genealogy The book, Genealogy and Family Histories of the Lighter and Wilhelm Families , contains information about the descendants of Jacob Henry Lighter and his wife, Sarah Ann Strickler. Pages 66–68 provide information about their children, including birth dates, marriages, residences, occupations, and the names of their children....

  Ethel Lighter Beggs — A Handwritten Obituary Have you ever looked through your genealogy files and found handwritten notes from research you did years ago? Before newspapers became available online, finding an obituary often meant visiting a library or archives, locating the appropriate roll of microfilm, and scrolling through pages of a newspaper. During my early genealogy research, I made trips to the Kansas State Historical Society in Topeka, Kansas, where I used their microfilm collection to research Dodge City newspapers. Rather than paying for copies of every article, I often transcribed the information by hand. Sometimes I copied an article almost word for word, while other times I simply recorded the information I considered important. Today's Friday Find is one of those handwritten transcriptions. Ethel A. Lighter Beggs Ethel A. Lighter Beggs is my first cousin twice removed . Our common ancestors are Washington Marion Crawford and his wife, Mary Foster . Ethel was the d...

 A Short Life Remembered: Oren Wesley Lighter Have you ever discovered additional information about an ancestor simply because a newspaper you previously searched became available online? Years ago, I spent hours scrolling through microfilm of Dodge City newspapers, looking for mentions of my Crawford family and their relatives. During that research, I discovered two newspaper articles about the birth and death of an infant in the Lighter family. Now that these newspapers have been digitized and made available on Newspapers.com, I can search for a surname instead of scrolling through page after page of microfilm. A recent search for the surname Lighter led me back to those original articles—and helped me discover a second death notice that I had missed! A Birth Announcement The January 25, 1900, issue of The Dodge City Globe included this brief announcement on page 5: BORN—To Mr. and Mrs. A. H. Lighter, yesterday, at noon, a boy. This announcement establishes that a son was born to...