Rubys and Smiths and Jefferys and Crows, Oh My!

Leah Rhae Ruby Smith Jeffery Crow, my 1st cousin 3x removed, continues to elude me, but I'm getting closer. Today I figured out that she had a child! Or I think she did. It gets confusing. I can't place her in Duluth, Minnesota, where her "daughter" was born in 1917, but the child's father, Bayliss David Jeffery, was definitely there. He was a salesman. I found Leah, Bayliss and Elizabeth al...l living next to her parents in, of all places, San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas in 1920. Then something happens and the couple divorce by 1922, she's living alone, he's married to the secretary/receptionist of the ad agency he works for, and the new couple have 4 daughters, none of them Elizabeth, so she stayed with Leah, meaning she IS Leah's daughter, I think, and not just Bayliss' from a previous relationship. I find them in the 1930 census in Texas, and Elizabeth is not with them. Elizabeth is next found in 1940 in Texas living with Leah, Leah's parents, and Leah's husband, Fred Crow. Elizabeth's surname has mysteriously changed to Crow. Then everyone seems to die: Bayliss and his wife die before 1940, and their daughters are found living in Illinois with Bayliss' sister in the 1940 census. Leah's parents die and are buried in San Antonio, and her husband, Fred, dies. He's got a find a grave memorial with a headstone showing his name and dates of birth and death, and Leah's date of birth, but no death date. Meanwhile, Elizabeth has taken back her father's surname and enlists in the armed forces in Texas in 1942. Then nothing until I find an Elizabeth Rhae Jeffery marrying a man named Vilo Dean Bannon in South Dakota. I do find both of their death data...in Spanaway, Pierce Washington! Elizabeth's Social Security Death index record shows she got her Social Security card in Texas, so I'm pretty sure I'm on the right track. There are also links to Vilo and Elizabeth's obituaries! But it's an index listing from a public library in Washington which no longer does the look-ups of the obituaries themselves, but they have links to people/places that do! For a fee.

So, what to do, what to do?  I found a public tree with Elizabeth Rhae Bannon in it, with her father listed only as "Jeffery", no first name, and no mother, married to Vilo and with a child, but the child is listed as "private", meaning s/he is living.  I sent a message to the owner of the tree, but she hasn't been on Ancestry in a year, so she may never see it.  And there are only 5 people in her tree.  I would so love to see the obituary, but I bet it doesn't even mention Leah, much less when Leah died.  

Genealogy can be so frustrating at times!

 

Griffins and Merediths and Smiths, Oh, My! (Part Two)

So this week has been all about the Merediths and Griffins and Smiths. I started at the beginning of the week with the Griffins and the Smiths, trying to track down the children of Abraham Smith, Sr, the father of Mary Smith, wife of Richard Griffin in Canada. Richard and Mary started out in New York in the 1700's, moving to Canada after the Revolutionary War. Or maybe before, I can't remember right now. I know Abraham Smith was born and died in New York. He was married twice. By his first wife he had 5 daughters. Ann, Bethiah, Jemima, Charity and Mary. The abstract for his will lists them all by their married names. Bethiah married William Hill and they had Solomon Hill who married Bethiah Griffin, his cousin, the daughter of Richard and Mary Smith Griffin. Abraham Smith married for his 2nd wife a woman named Margaret. That's all that's known about her. By her he had a son, Abraham Smith, Jr. He also lived and died in New York, though I can't find a will abstract for him. He married Mary Knapp, daughter of Daniel Knapp, of New York. I had been told once that Rebecca Smith, the wife of Jesse Meredith, son of Charles and Miriam Griffin Meredith, was the daughter of Abraham Smith, Jr and his wife, Mary Knapp. (Miriam Griffin was the daughter of Richard and Mary Smith Griffin, so if this had been true, Jesse and Rebecca would also have been cousins.) But I was unable to show that Abraham and Mary Knapp Smith were the parents of Rebecca. Plus, Rebecca is said to have been born in Pennsylvania. Her death record lists her parents as Abraham and Mary Smith, but I am positive they are not the Abraham Smith, Jr and Mary Knapp listed above. I have found all the listed children of them and only two of their children married and had children. Ironically, the only daughter to have children had a daughter who married and moved to Michigan. I cannot find a connection between that daughter and my Smith/Griffins.




These people, because they were born and died so long ago, and because I only have the United States subscription to Ancestry.com, have been a bit frustrating. I moved on to the Merediths who moved down into Michigan in the early 1800's, when Michigan was still a wilderness. Jesse and Rebecca Smith Meredith were the parents of Cyrus Meredith who was the father of Rebecca Jane Meredith who was my Grandma Lemon's mother.



One of Cyrus' brother's had a son, Charles Wesley Meredith. Charles married Hattie F Morley. Hattie was in a lot of public trees on Ancestry, and while her parents were known, the dates of the death was not. I found that information for both of them, which pleased me no end, but that information is beside the point. Charles and Hattie had three children, two girls and a boy. The boy, Maurice Clare Meredith, was involved in a head on collision with another car at 2am on a Sunday morning while taking his date for the evening home. Maybe she was his date, I don't know. There were newspaper clippings detailing the crash, which killed both Maurice and the driver of the second car. The woman Maurice was taking home survived the crash with a concussion and cuts and bruises. Her name was listed in the clippings, along with the names of her parents. The clippings also gave the names of Maurice's sisters and parents. One sister was already married and I traced her through her married name until I found her Find A Grave Memorial. Her obituary was on the memorial. That gave me the married name of her sister, Wilma Lee Meredith Donaghy. While tracking her, I found all kinds of hints for records about her death, which took place last year. I followed one of the records to the funeral home which buried her, but the listing for her arrangements on the home's website has expired. It did, however, have current listings and one of them was for the woman who was in the crash with Maurice Meredith! She died last June of this year. It even had a picture of her taken when she was much younger. She was 90 when she died. It blows my mind that she survived the crash and lived to be 90, marrying and having many children of her own. My genealogy research is filled with odd coincidences like that.

Ardis Eleanor Neumann, 90, of Sandusky, died Friday, June 21, 2013 at the Sanilac Medical Care Facility in Sandusky, Michigan.

She was born September 19, 1922 in Sandusky, Michigan the daughter of the late Carl and Ella (Miller) Zentgrebe.

She was a lifelong area resident and a 1940 graduate of Sandusky High School.

Ardis was a bookeeper, a Real Estate Broker and owned Neumann Realty.

She was a member of the Holy Redeemer Lutheran Church, Sandusky.



She is survived by:

Pamela & Daniel Zalenski (daughter) of Macomb,

Frederick Neumann (son) of Clinton Twp.,

Robert Zentgrebe (brother) of Sandusky,

Patricia Chesser (sister) of Alabama,

4 grandchildren, Heather Martino, Kimberly Zalenski, Carly Zalenski and Daniel Zalenski II.

5 great grandchildren,

Many other relatives and friends.



Funeral services will be held Monday, June 24, 2013 at 11:30 A.M. at Holy Redeemer Lutheran Church, Sandusky.

Pastor Jonathan Lorenz will be officiating.

Visitation will be held at Holy Redeemer Lutheran Church, Sandusky on Monday from 10 - 11:30 AM

Cremation will follow services at the Sunset Valley Crematory in Bay City.



Interment will be in the Greenwood Cemetery, Sandusky.

Memorial suggestion to the Sanilac Medical Care Facility.

Arrangements by Marsh Funeral Chapel, www.marshfuneral.com

Griffins and Merediths and Smiths, Oh My!

I've been doing a lot of genealogy research lately, all of it online, of course.  If I were independently wealthy, I'd physically go to the cities of my ancestors and research them all in person.  But I'm not, so I sit at a computer for hours at a stretch and Google and "search all records" and evaluate other people's trees to see if their information can be trusted.

I was working hard on the Laper tree when I took a break from genealogy and turned my attention to my house, which was screaming to be cleaned.  I mopped and vacuumed and did laundry.  Then, while putting away Knapper's laundry, I decided his dresser drawers needed cleaning and reorganizing, which I did.  I found in one of his drawers 4 computer-copied and printed books my uncle, Dick Lemon, had made and given him.  They were all about the early pioneer days of Michigan, and one of them was called "The Bark Covered House" by William Nowlin.  Well, it seems as though this William Nowlin, who moved with his parents from New York to Michigan in the early 1830's, is probably a distant relative of mine.  This started me back to researching the Griffins, the Merediths, and the Smiths.  These are very tangled strands, not to mention very confusing to follow, but amazingly, there is a lot of information about these families online.  So last night and today, while recuperating from all of yesterday's housework, I've been trying to patiently unravel the knots and twisted strings in these three families.  I'm making some progress, but it goes much too slow for my liking.

Crashing Through A Brick Wall

The most amazing thing happened recently.  I've been stuck on my maternal 3rd great grandmother for years.  All I knew about her was her name, Lucina McDowell, and that she married Thomas James Hodges.  They were the parents of Elizabeth Hodges Penrod who was the mother of Sarah Penrod Oglesby who was the mother of Alvateen Oglesby Barnard who was the mother of Myrna Loy Barnard Lemon who was the mother of me.  Years ago I was gifted with a copy of a photograph of Elizabeth Hodges Penrod, which I cherish. 

 

 

She looks strong and stern and kind of scary.  She was born in 1850 in Indiana and died in 1930 in Sturgis, Union County, Kentucky, where my grandma's family lived.  I've tried repeatedly to find the family of Elizabeth Hodges Penrod, but have always failed.  One cold day last winter, having given up after another of couple of hours of fruitless searching of records on ancestry.com, I stormed into the basement to feed the fire and yelled out loud, "OKAY!  If you all want me to find you, you're going to have to help me out!"  I am serious, this really happened.  I then spent the next 5 or 10 minutes roundly cussing out my mother's side of the family because of their stubborn refusal to be found.  My father's side of the family, which for years had been so difficult to trace, had become almost easy compared to the Oglesbys, Hodges, McDowells and Penrods.  So then I gave up looking for them for a long time.  I worked on my father's family, the Lemons, as is documented here.  I worked on my husband's family, the Knapps.  I even began the search for his mother's biological family, she having been adopted out before she was a year old by her birth mother.  I was wildly successful, for which I take none of the credit.  I am lucky in genealogy and sort of an idiot savant.  I start to look for a family and their names start falling into my lap.  My hunches almost always pay off.  And I love tracing families!  It gives me hours and hours of enjoyment.  When I get stuck on my own families, I create new trees and start documenting them.  It never gets boring, the thrill of finding them never gets stale.

 

So on Monday I thought to myself, "Why not see what McDowell families were living in Switzerland County, Indiana the year Lucinda and Thomas were married?"  Just an idle thought, and I wasn't able to do it on Monday, I looked on Tuesday.  The heavens opened and names started throwing themselves at me.  I found Lucinda's mother's maiden name.  I found her father's name.  I found the record of her parent's divorce and her father's remarriage to a woman named Lucinda Gibbons.  The names kept coming and I traced siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles.  Then today I found a fully documented site with all the names I'd been finding, plus some I hadn't found yet. 

 

Roberta Tuller has a website, http://www.anamericanfamilyhistory.com/index.html documenting my family.  :)  I am beyond happy.  I am, almost, beyond words.  Thank you, Roberta Tuller, for putting your research online so I could find it and break down this HUGE brick wall.

 

 

Now if I could only find the parents of David Stevens, the father of Edna America Stevens, my great grandmother on my mother's paternal side.  

 

 

New Leaf on an Old Tree

My first great-grandchild was born on July 25. A girl her parents named Bella Ann. The Ann is not for me; I'm Denise Ann, but because Ann is a name that is passed down in her mother's family. I'm only 55, much too young, I think, to be a great-grandmother. Of course, her parents are young as well. Her father is only 16. That would be my grandson, the oldest child of my oldest child. Her mother is even younger than her father.



Children are blessings. They ensure that part of ourselves is carried on. The way they end up coming into the world is not always a blessing, especially when their parents are ill-equipped to care for them. I don't know if I'll be able to be an integral part of her life, this newest addition to my family, the circumstances are so strange and messed up. But I love her anyway, no matter how she ended up here.



I met Bella Ann for the first time yesterday. A happy occasion for almost everyone. Babies are possibilities and endless potential. She's quite beautiful. I wonder how much of my own mother and father will be expressed in her. Will she be as intelligent as my father was? Will she be the excellent cook my mother was? What will she do with her life? And my biggest question is whether she will have the passion for knowing who all came before her as I do. Time moves quickly and I hope someone will carry on the work I started.

Finding Mary Sophia Herr

I found her.  I am so thankful to Family Search for indexing all of Michigan's death certificates from 1921 to 1952.  I am so proud that I was one of the people who helped index them!  I found Mary Herr's death record and her name had changed from Jamieson to Meyers, though I can't for the life of me find any record of her marrying a second time, or find her living with anyone named Meyers in a census.  I found her in the 1940 Census with her two youngest children, Grace and Betty Ann Jamieson.  I can't find where she and George W Jamieson divorced, and he didn't die until 1964.  I think. 

But I know it's her in the death record because it lists her parents as Frank Herr and Christine Knolty.  I'm so happy to have found her!  I wish I knew where she was buried, and I wish I could know what happened to her daughters, who were 12 and 16 in the 1940 census, after she died.  I won't be alive when the 1950 census is released, but I suppose by the time it is, I'll have all the answers to every one of my questions.  Or at least I like to think that all questions are answered in Heaven. 

The Way It Goes

I love to research genealogy.  I'm also easily frustrated, so when I get blocked on a line, I like to work on others.  I'm one of those people on Ancestry who has more than 12 trees, only 2 of which are related directly to me.  It's fun!  It makes me feel smart, and I'm relatively good at it.  But a couple of months ago I got to feeling tree-bloated.  I went through all my trees and deleted more than half of them. 

So of course someone emailed me about someone in one of my trees, and Yay! I still had that tree!  But the tree with all the information on the family that had intermarried several times with that particular tree, well, that's one of the ones I deleted.  I deleted sources and records and pictures and death certificates.  Now I find that I really wish I had that tree back.