Note: Before the Family History Expo in November, The Star asked readers to submit family names to see what could be found on newspapers.com. We spent 30 minutes on some of them to see what we could find.
James Linam has quite a bit of his family history but was seeking evidence of the death of his ancestor Thomas Linam, born in 1774. Family stories tell that he died in a ship fire, possibly in 1838-39, while traveling to visit his son, James W. Linam, in Victoria, Texas.
Newspapers.com lists four newspapers that publish or published in Victoria, but unfortunately, none of them published in the 1830s. We found nothing on this in any other U.S. paper either. We would have liked to help the Tucson James Linam with this, but it was not to be in the 30 minutes allotted to us.
We did find a few stories on Linam’s parents, none of which will be news to him, but will be interesting, nonetheless.
Our subject’s parents were Walter Thorp Linam and Frances Ruth Briscoe (usually called Ruth). Ruth’s father, Benjamin Edward Briscoe was a doctor in Willcox who also served in the Arizona Legislature. Her mother was Lula (Cottner) Briscoe. Dr. Briscoe died in 1955 in Phoenix and his obituary notes that his father’s name was Dr. James W. Briscoe.
Ruth and Walter married in Willcox in 1929, and lived there until 1937, when they moved to Hobbs, N.M. In Hobbs, Walter owned Linam Electric Co. and was a city commissioner who served twice as mayor of Hobbs. His retirement from the office of city commissioner in 1968 earned him praise in an editorial in the Hobbs Daily News-Sun, indicating he was well respected.
