Finding missing adults' names through legal notices in newspapers?

[stefaniied]

Hello!

I don't know if it has already been discussed, I did search but nothing came up.

When the Nation River lady was identified, I searched her name in newspapers archives and noticed that she had a lot of legal notices through the years. Obvioulsy, from these articles, that person disappeared from the radar, did she leave on her own and doesn't want to be found or something else happened?

Most missing adults aren't reported missing, like Jewell Langford, but most adults have either a property/legal obligations/or something to their names lol, so I wonder how effective it would be to search "whereabouts unknown" or "legal notice" in newspapers archives and look for repeating names through the year, and then see if these people are still missing or were eventually found.

Obviously we couldn't tell by these articles alone that Jewell had move to Montréal and died in Ontario, but there are some articles with her pictures prior to her disappearance, so maybe someone could have make the connection with the Jane Doe picture.

Anyone already done that and was succesful?

 

[doublestop]

That's definitely an interesting idea.

 

[cenazoic]

I also think it’s an interesting idea.
As far as how ‘effective’ it would be - I dunno.

I can tell you that, in my experience chasing (usually pre-1960s) missing people through newspapers, I often come across other missing people. Those missing people often have stories interesting enough that I get on a sidetrack and start trying to track them down.

And then - either a) they’re found/go home, or b) there’s no (published) resolution. To start to resolve that question, you’d then need to start doing Ancestry research, which also may not be fruitful (common name making it difficult to isolate the individual of interest, incomplete trees, etc); so it becomes a complicated question about whether they’re missing at all.

That said, I think there’s a lot of value in what you’re suggesting, although I think you’d (generic you) need a database before it became broadly useful, even if that usefulness is just about providing a often much needed context. For example, here’s person X, who’s listed in NamUs/etc, and here are some other people reported missing by newspapers/public records in the same vicinity/timeframe with ambiguous outcomes.

I’ve given thought to and started sketching out such a project, but time is the enemy of us all. One of these days!