Florida Star
Florida Star
Index of Births, Deaths and Marriages
Index of Births, Deaths and Marriages
1880-1901
1880-1901
Transcribed by
Jim and Bonnie Garmon
Transcribed by
Jim and Bonnie Garmon
The Florida Star
The Florida Star newspaper was first published in New Smyrna Beach, Volusia County, Florida by Mr. S. W. Harmon and Mr. Norris T. Feaster in April, 1880. shortly afterward, Mr. Harmon was compelled to give up the STAR and attend to another paper he owned in Volusia county, leaving Mr. Feaster in charge of the STAR. Mr. Feaster was forced to abandon the paper in a few weeks due to consumption (he died in 1881), selling the business to Perry and Ellis Wager, father and son, Titusville. The two men brought the presses to Titusville and began publishing a one page, four column paper in the middle of June 1880. In March 1881 the paper expanded to a six column folio, using a patent inside. About a year later the paper changed to a five column quarto. The masthead carried the notation "P.E. Wager, Publisher, E.B. Wager, Editor."
On March 7th, 1886 Perry Edward Wager was lost in the woods of Merritt Island and was never found. He was assumed dead after exhaustive searches found no sign of him or his body. His son, Ellis B. Wager continues the paper, as publisher and editor until 1917.
The Florida Star carried stories from up and down the Indian River from New Smyrna in the north to St. Lucie in the southern Brevard County. It was not just a local paper, carrying Titusville stories only, but had "correspondents" all up and down the Indian and Banana rivers. These correspondents were, I suspect, unpaid, for they are often chided for not passing along news from their localities.
Announcements of births, marriages, deaths and other activities of citizens of the Indian River County, such as comings and goings, social tidbits and other small news items were placed throughout the paper. This may have been nice for the subscribers at the time the paper was published but made indexing the paper more difficult since the information we wanted was placed throughout the paper in an unpredictable manner.
This index was created by reading each issue and manually transcribing the information into a Microsoft Access database. We tried to be as accurate as possible in the whole process, but realize that errors and missed items are possible, even probable.
The copy of the microfilm we used is stored at the Central Library and Reference Center in Cocoa, Florida. This collection of microfilm appeared to be the most complete one available. Partial sets of these are posted online at the Library of Congress web site Chronicling America and at the University of Florida Digital Newspaper Library.
The legibility of the newspaper on the microfilm varied greatly from year to year, and, of course, the microfilming process did not improve the readability of the paper. Most issues were readable, though some were only read with great difficulty. Some issues were totally missing on the microfilm, the originals perhaps lost or damaged beyond rescue. All the issues from May 3, 1895 through January 1, 1897 were totally missing.