September 23, 2011 by Jen
My new favorite website is the Library of Congress project called, Chronicling America. I have been going through the 1800 hits (Yes, 1800!) of the name Garst from the Wichita Daily Eagle newspapers from 1830s – 1920s. I’m up to about 700 and the year 1899. And so far, yes, 99% of these articles are about Garsts that I’m related to. You’d think it would take a long time, but really a lot of them are advertisements for their businesses so it’s easy to click to the next one.
You know the “Girl in the Fireplace” episode of Doctor Who? Where the Doctor and Rose are peaking into rooms that all contain Madame de Pompadour in different decades, but it’s all the same day for them. That is how I feel reading these articles. After article 700 I finally got to one that said, “A decade ago in the Wichita Eagle” and it mentioned a concert that my ggg-uncle sang in that I remember reading about earlier and I thought, “That was 10 years ago, it seems like only yesterday!” I’m such a dork.
The one thing about the website that I’ve never come across before is that all the files are .jp2 files. I like the files because they are GINORMOUS…not file size but just length and width size. They are BIG. But I can only open them using photoshop and then I have to crop the little piece of the newspaper page that I want, so it’s really time consuming to mess with them. The website does give you an option to clip a certain section of the image and save it as a regular jpg but the quality isn’t as good so of course I feel like I have to save the whole jp2 image instead.
BUT OMG THE CRAZY STUFF I HAVE FOUND!!! I have to post some of it. So be prepared for lots of weird newspaper articles.
From the 2 December 1898 Wichita Daily Eagle:
Frank Garst is my great great grandfather.
Ash Garst is his brother
Frank sued him because Ash owed him money for some cattle.

2 December 1898
I love what this newspaper thinks is news. I actually keep getting distracted by reading the surrounding articles as well because this newspaper is just full of crazy.
Next up, the article in which one of my ancestors assists in an experiment where they try to make it rain!