So, we finally got the situation resolved with the online company, which provides subscriptions to their website, on which newspaper archives are stored, indexed, and available for searching. My subscription has been extended from today instead of January 26, to make up for the time I missed.
I immediately started looking for Lucien Smith, a first cousin of my great grandfather Maurice Smith. I knew that he died young, but without context, or access to death records, I had a really hard time pinning down the date or place. Thanks to census records, I knew it was between 1900 and 1910.
So after we resolved the situation with this website, I was able to go straight to the archives and find out what happened to him.
While duck hunting with two other people, his canoe overturned, and he drowned....on this day, in 1901.
Cue the freaked out, mouth-full-of-egg-salad bawling.
Well hey there, Lucien! It's nice to finally figure out what happened (maybe "nice" isn't the right word).
Now I'm tossing around the idea that Lucien might have had a hand in the delayed access to my subscription.... but that's impossible, right?