MISSING FRIENDS
MISSING FRIENDS was a very popular column for many years. The advertisements were mostly very detailed and you can read the emotions felt by family and friends in any of them.
As sad as many were, it was also heartening when at the end of the advertisement, there was sometimes a mention of those who had been found.
The following is a selection of notices from 1902 to 1925. Have you checked such notices for your missing ancestors? A pity we couldn't go back in time and post a notice for some of those elusive souls.
Though most of these notices are from the New South Wales Police Gazette and Weekly Record of Crime (Sydney : 1860 - 1930), they cover all states and sometimes mention other countries.
Please do let us know in comments if you come across any of your lost folk.
29th October 1902
31st January 1906
28th March 1906
11 March 1908
24th February 1909
28th July 1909
24th November 1909
9th November 1910
22 February 1911
10th April 1912
18th February 1914
15th April 1914
21st April 1915
30 Jun 1915
6th August 1919
21st June 1922
22nd June 1922
9th December 1925
So many young people went missing - I wonder what happened to them all?
ReplyDeleteSadly I didn't find any of my missing people, I do hope someone does though.
I wonder also, why, how and what were their lives like at the time? A pity you haven't found any of yours as yet, but there are more to come at a later date.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment, appreciated as always.
Hi Crissouli, your recent post on Missing Friends put me in mind of a newspaper ad from a gt gt grandma of mine, seeking news or contact with her sister. I mention it in this blogpost here: https://goldrushadventure.blogspot.com/2016/10/susan-gets-her-man.html
ReplyDeleteThere is a family story that they did meet up eventually on the goldfields, but we don't know if the newspaper allowed them to get in touch. My feeling is that these advertisements would have had wide circulation by means of people handing on copies of old papers, and maybe the literate ones reading out loud to the less literate emigrants.
But looking again at my post it struck me that I had never seen that ad in the newspaper on Trove, I had found the reference in The Argus Missing Friends Index published 24 years ago by the late great indexer Marion Button. So I went back to Trove to locate that little ad, and despite knowing the newspaper, the date and the wording of the ad, I could not locate it searching the text. In the end I had to scan the entire front page of The Argus for that date to find it. When I did find it, and looked at the machine read text, I realised why I could not find that ad using any word at all in the ad. I quickly did a text correction for it, but wished I had kept a copy of the machine read text. However, the text above it was in much similar condition, and here it is:
Original text
UUOl Lila Mr 1» ith »Inn ii bj tin Lulina, nolle»
O ti IF, It li »t uldb 11 ii 11-.ti him AtM.enR.
M , I It II I cn ,1,1, stn t u»t lil
Corrected text
Should a Mr Keith, who came by the Guiana, notice this,
R B would be glad to see him. Address R W, Little
Lonsdale street east.
The only legible word in the machine read text was "Mr".
My point is, that these special newspaper indexes have not reached their use by dates yet. They are available in all good genie libraries and State Libraries.
Hi Lenore, what a story... I loved reading it. I'm always wondering as to what the full stories behind these ads are. This certainly fills part of that mystery. I have yet to find one in Australia that refers to my family, but I have found one in the American list in the Boston pilot. That I will save for another day...
ReplyDeleteI've spent so much time correcting OCR, which can be very frustrating, but the interpretations do depend on the quality of the newspaper originally.
How fortunate are we to have the opportunity to look back so easily. Thank you so much for sharing your story .. your comments and story are much appreciated.