aka Newspapering; or, the Discrete Charm of the Scanned Page
I like to read old newspapers. Not for genealogical purposes, necessarily, but to get some more perspective on the past. I also learn some odd things, like some newspapers used to print dumb jokes on the front page; in this case, some rather sexist jokes, but that’s the chance you take in century-old media. Anyway, that scan’s hosted on the Internet Archive, but my primary stomping grounds for this stuff is the Chronicling America collection hosted by the Library of Congress which has, front and center, a list of scanned papers published a century ago today, all ready to read. It was as if an occult hand guided me to the day’s edition of the Seattle Star which has, on its front page, a report of Charles S. Gilbert, a watchman, more-or-less accidentally shooting someone burglarizing the City Dye Works (another thing to research because… what?) identified as Nome Ginivin, who is mentioned to have been the first White child born in Nome, Alaska. Nome was mentioned to be 23 years old and an unemployed teamster, which, from the lack of capitalization, I take to mean someone who works with teams of horses, not necessarily a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
So… the first White born in far north Alaska bears some research. I google, and find this PDF of scanned 3-by-5 index cards from the Captain Lloyd H. “Kinky” Bayers Collection which is hosted by the Alaska State Library and is absolutely precious. Page 16 of that PDF mentions this:
Emp. 3/6/1923 A Juneau boy, and the first white child born in Nome, was shot and killed in Seattle as a night prowler. Born Jan. 1, 1900. Nome J. Ginnivan, was killed· by a night watchman when found prowling about the offices of the City Dye Works. (His sister says he may have been ‘crazy drunk’ and got in the place by mistake.)
… allowing for the odd OCR error. You can see the date has shifted and the spelling of the surname is a bit iffy, but it obviously matches. And… born on January 1, 1900? Hell, maybe he was.
That name gave me enough to google again and find this PDF about the history of the Nome, Alaska, public schools which goes into a bit more depth on its page 49:
In 1899, the Eskimos made a settlement on the sandspit outside the Anvil City encampment. There a son was born to Mr. And Mrs. Charles E. Gordon, probably a white man with a native wife, on December 9, 1899. The Nome News announced the event as the first birth in Nome.1 On January 1, 1900, Mr. And Mrs. J. Ginivan announced the birth of their son, “the first child of pure Caucasian blood,” to be born in the camp.2 There is reason to believe that neither of these children was the first, but the order of racial precedence was established by their arrival. The white boy was named Nomie, and later appeared in the school rolls, but young Gordon’s future is unknown.
Another source, another spelling of the surname, and now we have some doubt about Nomie’s claim to fame. (Note that that section of the PDF is about how racist Whites were.)
So there we have a simple dive into history, purely off a century-old newspaper story.