My friends - We will close out this week with another in the Skills Puzzler series. We've not discussed the use of early newspapers in genealogical research to any great extent here. I have a post for the "Tips" series about early Jackson Purchase newspapers, and I'll be posting that in the near future. Early newspapers, which are a real rarity in the JP region, can often be useful to us in getting a "feel" for the times in which our ancestors lived. Most often, they are researched for their obituaries, but we have to remember that, unless the obituary was actually written by a person who witnessed the death, it is not an original(or primary)source - it is a derivative(or secondary) source. We all hope that these obituaries will also tell us something about the life of the deceased beyond just dates. Here is the scenario for our Puzzler: About 12 years ago, one of my maternal cousins was researching the Bruner line, which she and I share. She knew when our common forebear, Reuben Bruner, died in Indiana - 1833. As it turned out, there were actually two newspapers in the county in Indiana where he died. He had lived there with his son for about ten years until his death, having moved from his original home, two counties away, which he had built upon his arrival from Germany, and where he had lived for about 35 years. My cousin checked the newspaper film after his death for a several week period, and did find a brief notice of his death, giving his name and date of death, as well as his age. With that in hand, she had abandoned the newspaper part of her research and gone on to other things. She became stumped on finding anything else on old Reuben Bruner. But she missed some important clues by not looking more closely at the newspaper. The question before the house, then, is this: she found the death notice in the newspaper - what else should she have been looking for? Everything you need to know to answer that question is in the narrative above. If you want to share your thoughts on this one, please feel free to send them to me, or to the List. I'll be back with the solution sometime over the weekend. As always, there will be no data posts on Saturday or Sunday. And, this week, there may be no JP land grants post or other ancillary items, as I will be away for part of the weekend. I'll drop in from time to time, and if I can put something together in one of the areas that I usually address on weekends, I'll do so. I hope your weekend is a good one. -B ============================================================