ALTHOF, Jacob H (1828-1904)

I recently added a membership to GenealogyBank.com which is primarily a database for old newspapers. It paid off almost immediately in that I found two articles on my great (3x) grandfather, Jacob Heinrich Althof, who was born in Hessia or Prussia (I haven't figured out which yet.)

Anyway, this article is from the Erie Tageblatt, Erie, Pennsylvania, dated October 22, 1904. The Erie Tageblatt--which means daily news--is a newspaper for the German speaking population of Erie at the turn of the 20th century. The obituary for Jacob reads:

Died

Friends and acquaintances, the sad news is that this morning Mr. Jacob Althof, died at the age of 75. The funeral will be held from the apartment of his son, Frank Althoff, 119 East 17th Street, on Monday after at 2 p.m. Friends are invited. [signed] The mourning family.

That's a rough translation using Google translator. I was unable to translate a couple of words but I was able to get the gist of the article. Frank Althof is my great, great grandfather so I gain two pieces of information about some of my direct ancestors--the death of Jacob and the address of Frank.

Additionally, I found a second article on Jacob--another obituary really--which is a written because Jacob was one of the leading citizens of Erie. It took about an hour to translate this small obit and that is after working on two others so that I was more familiar with several of the words and the German alphabet, which has 30 letters.

I've said many times that genealogy is like a puzzle to be solved. These German news articles certainly fit into that category because it takes time to obtain the details. It's not impossible but like an onion the layers are removed slowly increasing the anticipation.

Note: image found on Google images of one of the Erie Tagablatt's mastheads.