Clues From Volumes of the Past

In pursuing all the siblings—alive or dead—listed in William C. Woodworth’s 1928 obituary, we were able to create a brief outline of the family grouping of their parents, the senior Lafayette D. and Eliza Smith Woodworth.

In the process of piecing together the story of family members as remote from William’s final resting place as his sisters Lillian Woodworth Hoskins in Michigan and Emma Woodworth Larabee in Wisconsin, a few interesting discoveries popped up about their father’s travels, too. Some of these discoveries give a clearer picture of how and why William and a few of his siblings ended up as residents of California. Thankfully, some provide a clear listing of not only the siblings mentioned in William’s obituary, but another sister, too.

You may have noticed in the comments to yesterday’s post that one reader—“Iggy,” otherwise known as the blogger “Intense Guy”—unearthed an informative text file from amidst the myriad records at the Library of Congress International Global Gateway. That link provided a confirmation of the names of the children of Lafayette D. Woodworth.

If you remember, William’s father was considered to be among the pioneer settlers of the San Gabriel Valley, so this new-found biographical sketch contained much more than just the names in this family. We’ll take a look at what that entry had to say about the family’s history over the next few days, and compare that 1901 publication with the information from a much earlier version, published in Wisconsin in 1879. Due to the length of the articles, though, I’ll share them in shorter segments over the next few days, along with a few observations. Almost without fail, though, such publications include discrepancies, which we will also review.

Thanks to the perseverance of authors and historians of a time removed from us by over one hundred years, we can—once we find such “outdated” resources—return to those pages and glean the information we crave in our quest to recreate our family history narratives. And thanks to the skilled efforts of fellow researchers and readers, we help each other along on our path to tell our own ancestors’ stories.

Photograph of Lafayette D. Woodworth, Senior, above right, and signature below, from the 1901 volume, Historical and Biographical Record of Los Angeles and Vicinity, written by J. M. Guinn, then Secretary of the Historical Society of Southern California; courtesy Library of Congress.