I have always been a user of Ancestry.com. Its been useful and limiting at the same time. But through my membership its enabled me to use one of their other sites Newspapers.com.
I had never been able to find much information about Derdghayan's that lived in Lansing especially in the early 20th century. By accident I realised the Lansing Journal had been added right back to the 1910's so all of a sudden I was able to find all this information I had never been able to access.
Over the years I had always heard stories about certain people....my view has been stories are never really true but are always embellished to make someone look better. So through some research I was able to debunk one of these tales.
Without naming the family I had heard that SR came back to Lebanon because he had killed a man during a poker game and maybe that's the story he told everyone to make himself look better. I came across a newspaper article about how he was fighting deportation back to Lebanon.
From the story it names his crime as theft. Over a period of 3-4 months he had stolen money from the shop next to his place of employment totaling about $400 in 1927. I'd hate to think how much money that would be in today's terms.
Other stories I had heard about Derdghayan's was that they loved to drink and gamble so I wasn't surprised when stories coming up about Derdghayan's being arrested for gambling, drunkenness, assault and the supply of Syrian spirits (I assume they are talking about homemade Arak).
Also found announcements about births, engagements, marriages, divorces and deaths. These were all very helpful.
Moral of the story is don't always believe what you hear but get out there and find the truth...
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