finding ridiculously difficult dates

[icactus]

I just spent forever finding dates for Charles F Hammond who wrote lyrics to a few of William G Hammond's works and I finally stalked him down. I hit SOOOOOO many dead ends. Finally i found him through his brother down through hand written census records to florida and then through a neighborhood newsletter he published until his death. NO THANKS TO GOOGLE.

I then realized we have no way to pat each other on the back when accomplishing something like this and I felt like I deserved a trophy (or something from the estate of Charles F Hammond) for finally finding this guy. So I thought I'd start this thread in case in the future any of you find some ridiculous bit of information and want to share. I will congratulate you as long as you like

Anyone have a great story to share?

[coulonnus]

Here is a ridicoulous bit of information: https://128.151.244.116/institutionalPu ... ionId=1522

At least you learn that "Original Publication Date: 1906" and you can make a reasonable guess about his life dates.

Did you know that a Google search with "cup of tea" (please type both quotes) gives you the results containing this exact string, instead of the results containing cup, of, tea spread apart in the page? A Google search with "William G Hammond'" "Charles F Hammond" gives only 7 results!

NB: here my browser complained with a message "perhaps someone is reading what you type" or similar but I ignored it and clicked on this site.

Hope this helps.

[reinhold]

@icactus: Great job!

@coulonnus: In how far does that help finding the birth/death dates of Charles F Hammond? None of the google results provide any date, except that he was alive in 1906 and 1911.
Did he die before/after 1923, before/after 1940, before/after 1960? When exactly did he die?
Those are the relevant questions, and a google search (with or without phrase searching) does nothing to answer them.