I was browsing the New York Times archives recently and stumbled across an article about the ship that delivered my grandmother to the port of Philidelphia in September 1913. I knew that my grandmother came to the US on the ship Stampalia and also read about how the ship was sunk (Aug 17, 1916) during World War I, but the article I found was press reporting on the event only three days after the fact (Aug 20, 1916). The article also provides additional details on the ship I hadn't seen before.
I was so full of myself for finding this nugget, I kept looking for more and found another article( dated Aug 21, 1914) about the Stampalia. It seems a US banker had a whacky adventure trying to get out of Italy shortly after the start of World War I, and he was able to finally get passage on the ship. It's a good story, but I really like the description he gave of his accomodations (steerage) on the Stampalia. It's a small part of the article, but it interests me because my grandmother was in steerage on that very ship about one year prior.
To me, this kind of discovery is more exciting than any other and also goes to show how important newspaper archives are to family history.
