The Institute has done additional indexing of obituaries for the Forum newspaper of Fargo, N.D. A total of 1,067 new obituaries have been added. The database now contains over 71,000 entries. Complete years recently indexed were July 1907-April 1908 This indexing makes the database complete for the years 1894-April 1908 and 1983-1995. Other years are represented in the database but only for an occasional issue or obituary.

Our gratitude is extended to Institute volunteer Elaine Linke, who has tackled the early years of the Fargo Forum and Daily Republican. She is responsible for indexing the entire run from 1894 to 1908. Anyone looking for obituaries in this early period will know how difficult it can be to find even an announcement of death, much less a formal obituary. She has also included all death notices, some of which only stated that a death occurred. Even these can be valuable information for a family historian in these early years before there were death certificates and other records.

The Institute and the research public are indeed indebted to these individuals. Their many hours of hard and often tedious work make accessing such information by the researcher effortless. If others would like to help in this indexing project, please contact John Bye at the Institute (701-231-8877 or at John.Bye@ndsu.edu).

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