I Love Newspapers — Making Sense of it All

I usually get a bit of a rush when I find an ancestor’s name in a newspaper. Not so much this week.

One of my pandemic projects has been to do a deep-dive into Kansas newspapers for any mention of the McCormick and Baty families. My husband’s second great-grandfathers, George Washington Baty and Richard Dillon McCormick and their families settled in Kansas in 1875 and many of their children and grandchildren raised their families in Labette County, Kansas. As a consequence, many of them regularly showed up in the local papers. And when I say “regularly,” I really mean “excessively.”

As the pandemic winds down (fingers-crossed) I have finally given more attention to this project. My initial search for just “Baty” in Newspapers.com, focusing only on the five newspapers in Parsons, Kansas and the time-frame of 1872 to 1941 resulted in 2,199 hits![1] Yikes! A few of those were just poor OCR translations (i.e. “baby” for “Baty”) and there was another Baty family in the area.[2] However, I would estimate more than 50% were related to Bruce’s family. Yikes again!

Here’s why the newspapers wrote about them:

· O.P. Baty (George’s son) worked for the railroad which had its own column in the papers, ran for mayor (twice) and the board of education (he did not win any of those races), ran his own construction business for a while, belonged to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (where his wife, Louisa, belonged to the woman’s auxiliary, the Sunflower Rebekah lodge).

· Lee Baty (my husband’s grandfather) was a star athlete (football, baseball, and basketball) in high school, also worked for the railroad where he was the union president for the railroad clerks, played baseball after high school for local teams, which he also managed (including the Knights of Columbus “Casey” team), and bowled in the local league.

· Kathryn McCormick Baty was a member of the K of C’s women’s auxiliary, the Daughters of Isabella and a member of the Philomathic Club.[3] Her aunt, Ellen Quinlan, was a famous manufacturer of women’s dresses and Kate was her local sales person.

· Many of the Baty and McCormick children and grandchildren married locals and each of their engagements, marriages, and children’s births necessitated multiple articles.

· All property transfers in the county were reported.

· Every time any of them had a visitor or went to visit anyone, even if just for a day, the newspaper reported on it. Vacations usually merited multiple columns (reporting on their departure, the return home, and sometimes mention of their vacation activities).

· Graduations and other academic achievements were reported in detail.[4]

· Baty and McCormick grandchildren were in numerous plays, musicals, reviews, and other performances.

· Most birthday parties were reported and the list of attendees and sometimes even gifts were generally noted.

· Every serious illness or death of every family member, even if they never lived in Parsons, required at least two or three columns.

In my last post I complained about not knowing the “real” life of my subjects. I know I should be grateful for all of these articles but the vast number of them is a tad overwhelming. While separating the wheat from the chaff will be difficult, the reward will be a more complete picture of life in Parsons.

[1] For this project, I decided to focus initially on Parsons, the largest city in Labette County where most of the Batys and McCormicks lived.

[2] Who I just know is related, but I haven’t been able to make the connection yet.

[3] Her marriage to Lee Baty in 1918 brought these two families together, but since both families had lived in the area for over forty-years, the families may have frequently interacted before then.

[4] For instance, a front-page story in the Parsons Independent in April of 1905, noted that Ellen Quinlan completed her shorthand course and was moving to Kansas City to work at a position secured for her by the Remington Typewriter Company. "Miss Nellie Quinlan," The Parsons (Kansas) Independent, 28 April 1905, p. 1, col. 4.