Nearly 41,000 obituaries indexed!! Elvis too??

These are the members of the EWGS Obituary Indexing Committee. Good lookin' group, to be sure. And the work we do? Sonji keeps the numbers and as of 6 June 2020 we had indexed 40,950 names from Spokane area obituaries and biographies. And we're about half way done with the project. We have found no obit for anybody as famous as the fellow below but we'll keep looking.

EWGS Obit Indexing Committee Update

The hard-working members of the OBIT committee have now been working for a year to create a database of where to find a specific obit from the Spokane papers since day one. 

 

Above are Jeanne Coe, Sonji Rutan, Donna Phillips, Lynn Krogh, Duane Beck, PJ Farrance-Rabel, Sandi Gaffney, Patricia Flint, Lynda Keenan and Charles Hansen. 

This photo shows a huge step toward completion of the project. Thousands of obits have been clipped from newspapers and glued onto cardstock and then alphabetized in archival boxes down at the MAC. The upright cards indicate those needing indexing. (Sandi is The Queen here; she's indexed hundreds of names/obits already!) 

Goal is to have a Guide To Finding Spokane Area Obits on the EWGS website soon.................. interested in helping? Contact Donna. 

He Discovered The Fire Of '89

Jeanne Coe and I are indexing the obituaries found in the 24 drawers of biographies down at the MAC. This particular one was too interesting not to share. From the Spokesman Review, the date was 22 April 1937.

Harry B. Arnold, the man who is credited with discovering the historic fire of 1889 which destroyed Spokane, then Spokane Falls, is dead.

Mr. Arnold died Tuesday night in his home, W. 713 Dalton, aged 75. Christian Science funeral will be read Friday at 1:30 ......

It was a history-making ride that Mr. Arnold and his young wife, the former Ellis L. Barzee of Turner, Oregon, took that Sunday afternoon of August 4, 1889. Noticing the smoke and flame pouring from the roof of a restaurant, Mr. Arnold stopped his carriage to give the alarm, pointing his whip at the blazing roof. The alarm was spread by another resident whose Sunday afternoon nap on the front porch of his nearby home was interrupted by the newlyweds' cry. 

After the town was destroyed, Mr. and Mrs. Arnold moved to Farmington, where he entered the grain business and became widely known in the Palouse. In 1908 they returned to Spokane, where Mr. Arnold entered the real estate and investment business.

Mr. Arnold was born in the Umpquah Valley, Oregon, on May 17, 1861, and went to Idaho with his grandparents in 1872. When 17 he joined the Second Idaho Volunteers under Captain Franklin McCarrie and served during the Nez Perce Indian uprising. Later he homesteaded near Farmington where he farmed and operated a livery stable several years before he and his wife moved to Spokane Falls in 1889. 

Daily Obits

For about a year I have been receiving the obits from our local newspaper the Spokesman Review via RSS feed, and so every morning when I opened Google Reader I would have the obits from the Spokesman Review (note the Spokesman Review charged an extra dollar to put an obit online so a few did not show up in my RSS feed). Saturday the 29th the RSS feed quit, so Sunday I went to the newspaper website to see what had happened. Obits are not on the newspaper website any more, they are now Powered by Legacy.com. While you can search for a recent obit for free they do not offer a RSS feed, but will send you obits to your E-Mail for a FEE. They have a few options one for $199.99 a year to search all the newspapers and send E-Mail for the FIVE keywords you pick (You can change them when ever you want). Second option same keywords but just one newspaper $14.99 a year. Third package is Genealogy Package for 19.99 a year and they search for five surnames in all their newspapers. All three packages have a FREE 30 day trial.