1876 - searching BNA etc for RHODES, Cinderford (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Friday, March 04, 2016, 19:29 (3195 days ago) @ smashton

Hi Melanie, that's a shame your library BNA access isn't as good as it could be. I live near the main central Library for our London Borough, it's very large across six levels, they sent zillions refitting it last year, yet when I tried to access the FMP site I couldn't, they told me they'd not been allowed to renew the subscription due to cost cutting... But yes, when I had a short subscription of one fo the subscription websites a year or so ago it transpired that site (Genes Reunited or FMPast) didnt carry all the papers the main BNA site does. At least nowadays one can sign up to the main BNA site for just a month if one has home internet access, it used to be at least a year so much costlier.

That said, many many hours experience of my searching the BNA site has proven it can be very frustrating, I've spent ages in the past trying to re-find articles I KNOW are on there. One of the reasons is the OCR system; it only needs a glitch on the image (a crease, misprint or mispelling, and it won't find what seems very clear to the human eye, hence sometimes we need to search from another angle, perhaps trying a different name etc, such as Caleb say.
But the usual worst culprit is trying to add too much into the "search" box, less almost always gives more. It's far better to just search surnames only, especially as Rhodes is not a common name, while using the site's filters to narrow down the dates as close as possible to your target decade; also filter specific newspapers, in our case the Gloster Citizen and then, maybe, the weekly Gloster Journal - both often carry the exact same stories - altho the Journal is good for finding photos of C20th weddings etc. By only searching surnames I've often found other items apart from my initial targets, including discovering family members I had't previously known about. My searches today on the BNA site suggests your William is invariably reported as "Wm", I think to save typesetting effort, but rarely is it just "W" !
Finally, as I've posted elsewhere, if you have internet access at home but without the BNA etc subscription service, I suggest to first use the BNA site's free search facility from home, to find what looks likely hits for you, and note them down (I copy & paste or screenprint these hits onto word documents that I then take to the library etc on a flashmemory stick), as library time is often limited and their servers can be slow. This also means that as and when I'm sent a discount-access offer, I've already done the groundwork in advance.

Then again, as I've found a few times, in some cases the outcomes of legal cases and adjourned cases just didn't make the papers, sadly for us altho perhaps not our ancestors.

In case you havent seen them, here's a few hits for your William (I think) that I found earlier from the BNA free search; this shows the BNA search engine works in mysterious ways, I first searched including "Cinderford" as well as "Wm Rhodes", yet only found the first of these. On removing Cinderford, the others jumped to the top of the queue, yet they include the word Cinderford... !
I recommend for every search, always view as many pages of possible hits as far as you can, sometimes the order is rather odd and the good ones don't appear first ?. Keep checking that your filter settings (shown top left) have not changed themselves to show results in "Date(most recent)" order, instead of the much better "relevance" setting, this sometimes seems to happen by accident and with most frustrating effect.

"CINDERFORD
“... very numerous attendence of relatives, friends, and neighbours. The pall bearers were Messrs. T. B. Brain, Walter J. Brain, Wm. Rhodes ... ”
Saturday 08 September 1877 , Gloucester Journal"

“... CINDERFORD. Presentation. Mr. W. Frowen Rhodes, formerly postmaster at Cinderford, and one of the ... ”
Saturday 20 October 1877 , Gloucester Journal

.".. Gloucestershire Banking Company, Cinderford; by any Member of the Committee. W. HEANE, Esq., Chairman. LIST OF £ *. d. Mr. Wm. Rhodes. ... ”
Saturday 30 March 1878 , Gloucester Journal"

"CINDEHFOHD
“... were granted an interview with the members. Mr. Ambrose Brain introduced the deputation, which consisted of Messrs. Caleb Rhodes, Wm. ... ”
Saturday 01 March 1879 , Gloucester Journal"