The Jersey Journal

Funny thing happened after I wrote my post about newspapers from Scranton last night. I went back to genealogybank.com and I looked at the Jersey Journal. It seems that genealogybank.com has added more content, specifically to the Jersey Journal.  They now have the Jersey Journal from 1867 through June of 1977.  My wife and kids won't be seeing much of me for awhile.

I have been searching through the Jersey Journal looking for tidbits about my family, who have been in Jersey City since the early 1900s.  My dad's family, particularly his mom's side (O'Dea and Sterling) have been in Jersey City since about 1890 or so, and his father (Brady) came to Jersey City from Scranton shortly after 1910.  On my mom's side, both parent's families (Bergen and McConville) have been in Jersey City since the late 1800s.  So there is lots of blog fodder in the Jersey Journal

I found your standard obits and marriages, which will always give you information, but I found some things that I wasn't even looking for.  Like this:

I know that you can barely read this, but it is my mom's engagement announcement (to my dad, obviously).  Even though it is very poor quality, I had to add it.  It was published 6 Mar 1948, five days before mom's birthday, and exactly one year before the birth of my sister  Phew! That was close.

Then I found more articles about my dad and his brothers, Jim and Frank, returning home from WWII.  Jim and Frank were both in the Army Air Corps and were both shot down and taken prisoner, months apart.  They wound up in the same POW camp and escaped / were liberated together.  They spent time in a hospital in England before being shipped home.  Dad was in an anti aircraft battalion in Italy when my grandmother was notified that they were safe, dad was also a veteran of the North African invasion.  Can you imagine being my grandmother and sending three of your four sons to war in Europe.  They were overseas for years before coming home.  Six years later she would send her fourth son to fight in Korea, and there is an article about my Uncle Paul coming home that I found in the Jersey Journal.  So all four of her sons went off to war and made it home to live their lives.

That's enough for tonight, and I am sure I will find more interesting items as I keep searching.