A Goodbye to Emma

With the sudden passing of Patrick Kelly at the age of sixty one, the next question might have been whether his wife had followed him in death shortly thereafter. Often, that happens with couples in a lifelong marriage.

Now twice-widowed, Patrick Kelly’s wife, Emma, outlived her second husband’s abrupt departure by twenty years. The daughter of a Württemberg immigrant (Frederick Carle) and an Ohio-born child of German extraction (Margaret Riesberger), Emma was perhaps a resilient survivor in her own right. She missed her seventy seventh birthday by barely one month, passing away on August 21, 1951. Among those in her family surviving her were sixteen grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Finding more information than that on Emma was a challenge—mostly owing to the invisible role women played in past eras. Even details normally considered appropriate to share publicly were often muddied by reporting errors. Remember the puzzle over who served as maid of honor at her wedding? Looking back on it now, it is easy to see how one option was given by the newspaper as “May Reseberger.” It was simply a combination of misspelling of given name of Emma’s next-younger sister Mae and substitution of her mother’s maiden name (also misspelled) for her own.

Even discovering Emma’s own middle name presented a challenge. Depending on which document was viewed, her middle name—thanks to indecipherable handwriting—appeared to be either Waterling or an improbable Walerling. In her eldest son’s World War I draft registration, though, it was given as Walberga—an alternative I prefer as most believable. Why? Because her mother, Margaret Riesberger, turned out to be daughter of a woman by that name, herself.

While Emma was most certainly occupied with the raising of a large family—she was mother to eight children, all of whom survived to adulthood—she also appeared to be a devout member of her parish. Her obituary mentioned the usual associations Catholic women were often a part of in that century. In addition to those familiar designations—belonging to the Rosary Society of her church, or the Sacred Heart League—there was one I wasn’t familiar with: the Daughters of Isabella.

Not being Catholic myself, I needed to look that one up. You may already be familiar with that auxiliary group to the Knights of Columbus. In a history of the formation of both the Knights of Columbus and the Daughters of Isabella, I discovered that the founding meeting of Fort Wayne’s council of the Daughters of Isabella occurred on April 23, 1923, which “drew 1,400 women inducted into the order at an imposing ceremony at the cathedral.” At the time of that first meeting in Fort Wayne, Emma’s youngest daughter was barely old enough to begin grade school. Perhaps participation in this church-based endeavor became part of what Emma focused her energies on as her children grew up and became more independent. By the time of her death, her children were certainly scattered about the Midwestern states—Detroit, Chicago, and Utica, Illinois—as well as those who still remained in the city of their birth, Fort Wayne.

Emma’s passing, marked by her obituary in The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette on August 22, 1951, denoted the end of an era for the Kelly family—that of transition from destitute Irish immigrants to born-in-America citizens of a promising future and the legacy of an “American Dream” that could still be passed along to their own children.

            Funeral services will be held Friday for Mrs. Emma W. Kelly, 76, who died at 5 a.m. Tuesday at the South Whitley Rest Home, where she had been a patient for three months. She had been ill for a year. She had formerly resided with her daughter, Mrs. O. E. Glass, 2903 Shawnee Drive.

            A native of Logansport, she had lived here the past 55 years. Her husband, the late Patrick T. Kelly, was a former employe of the City Utilities. She belonged to St. Patrick's Catholic Church, its Rosary Society, the Daughters of Isabella, the Sacred Heart League and the LCBA.

            Survivors, in addition to Mrs. Glass, include three other daughters, Mrs. John Gradel and Mrs. Paul Boyd, both of Fort Wayne, and Mrs. Willard Britten of Utica, Ill.; three sons, Fred W. Kelly of Detroit, Mich.; Emmett P. Kelly of Chicago, Ill., and Stephen C. Kelly of Fort Wayne; one sister, Sister M. Carmelita of the Third Order of St. Francis, stationed in Burlington, Ia.; 16 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

            Friends may call at the Getz & Cahill Funeral Home after 7 p.m. today. Services will be held there Friday at 8:30 a.m. and at St. Patrick's Catholic Church at 9 a.m., the Rt. Rev. Msgr. D. L. Monahan officiating. Burial in the Catholic Cemetery. The Rosary Society will meet at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the funeral home and the Daughters of Isabella at 8 p.m. Thursday.

A Sad Discovery

Now that we’ve met each of Patrick and Emma Carle Kelly’s children—Frederick, Kathryn, John, Emmet, Stephen, Helen, Marie and Mildred—I need just a couple more posts to bring the story of this family to a close.

Though blessed with eight children—seven of whom enjoyed success and long life—Patrick, himself, faced a sudden end. He had been serving as “watchman”—later designated, in some reports, as engineer—for the Number Three Pumping Station, part of the Fort Wayne Water Works, a one mile walk from his home. It was a regular job that Patrick held on to for thirty years—about as long as he and Emma had been married.

The report in The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette mentioned that he had been sick for the past few days, but it wasn’t much to be concerned about. He had felt well enough to return to work the next Monday. Apparently alone at the time of his death, his body was discovered by another employee at midday.

The newspaper gave the supposed cause of death as apoplexy. While we know that term as synonymous with stroke, I still keep my online List of Archaic Medical Terms close at hand to confirm.

Patrick’s passing must indeed have been sudden, given the time frame in the report—and yet, it must have made family wonder how different the outcome might have been, had someone else been there to offer him help. Families always wonder about such “what ifs” when that “expected” moment we all know we must face comes about so unexpectedly.

            Funeral services for Patrick T. Kelly, aged 61, who died suddenly Monday noon of apoplexy while at work at No. 3 pumping station, Broadway and Rudisill Boulevard, will be held Thursday morning at 8:30 o'clock at the home, 831 Huestis Avenue, and at 9 o'clock at St. Patrick's Catholic Church. The Right Rev. Msgr. Joseph F. Delaney will officiate. Burial in the Catholic Cemetery.

            Mr. Kelly had been an employe of the city waterworks department for the last 30 years and was stationary engineer at station No. 3. His body was discovered at the station by Louis Nickerson, 13091/2 St. Mary's Avenue. Dr. E. A. King, deputy county coroner, investigated the death.

            Mr. Kelly had gone back to work Monday after having been ill at home for two days. He had not been seriously ill and felt well enough to return to work. He was born and reared in Fort Wayne and educated in St. Patrick's Catholic School. He was a member of St. Patrick's Catholic Church, the Holy Name Society of that church; Division No. 1, Ancient Order Hibernians, and C. B. L. of I.

            Surviving are the wife, Emma; four daughters, the Misses Catherine, Helen, Marie and Mildred, all of this city; three sons, Frederick, of Detroit, Mich.; Emmett, of Chicago, Ill., and Stephen, at home; a sister, Mrs. Mary Phillips, of this city, and five grandchildren. The body was taken to the Getz & Cahill Funeral Parlors and will be returned to the home late today.

The Baby of the Family

After what seemed to be the traditional event, every two years or so, of a new infant gracing the Fort Wayne household of Patrick and Emma Carle Kelly, perhaps the couple thought their Marie was going to be the baby of the family. After Marie’s birth in 1911, there was no new arrival to take on that role.

It wasn’t until six years later—in 1917—that someone finally showed up to claim that enviable spot. New baby Mildred Agnes Kelly arrived on the same day as her older sister Helen’s birthday: March 29.

True to form for this family, something had to be recorded in error on her birth records. Leave it to the county to satisfy that requirement: listing the Kellys’ new daughter as Agnos Kelley.

The following April 15, the new baby was baptized at Saint Patrick Church, with sponsors listed as George Wagner and Maria Carroll.

Unlike some of her older siblings, who must have hit a sweet spot in the Society pages of their city’s newspapers, Mildred seemed to lead an unobtrusive childhood.

At the age of twenty two, she did the predicable: met and married a man, settled down to domestic life and had five children—three daughters and two sons. Unlike her siblings, though, she married a man from far away Upper Peninsula in Michigan—specifically, Iron River. Born and raised in that town we’ve stumbled upon when I tried my hand at researching what I hoped would be a related Flannigan line, this Willard M. Britten left home and moved to Fort Wayne specifically to find work at the Zollner Corporation, a foundry and supplier of pistons to such companies as Ford, General Motors and International Harvester.

While I have no way of knowing—I have yet to access any newspaper articles or other documents to indicate differently—I presume life settled down to the predictable after Willard and Mildred exchanged vows on October 14, 1939. Willard had a steady job—he worked at Zollner until his retirement in 1980—and, perhaps a sign of the times, Mildred eventually also sought employment outside their home.

As much as I like to assert that life became more endurable—actually, quite blessed and pleasant—for those children and grandchildren of parents fleeing the destitute conditions of post-famine Ireland, even in this new century, their descendants had moments that awoke them from any dreams of paradise on earth. The tragic episode in this couple’s life came when their then-thirty-three-year-old son, Dennis, died from injuries received during a house fire in 1983. While the rest of Dennis’ family survived, the sudden shock of this loss must have left an indelible mark in the memories of his entire family—including that of his now-elderly parents.

While I can’t say for sure, I wonder if this tragedy hastened the death of Dennis Britten’s own parents, for his mother, Mildred, died only three years later. Dennis’ father, Willard Britten, died on his seventy-fourth birthday, two years after the loss of his wife. As I’ve been told several times, there is just something different about suffering the loss of one’s own child—no matter the age. It is an experience that turns the nature of life upside down.

The six grandchildren left behind at Willard and Mildred Kelly Britten’s passing would be third cousins to my husband. Of course, we have never met them—nor any of the children of Mildred Kelly’s siblings. All I’ve been able to glean about these family members has been found through the same research methods you’ve no doubt utilized in learning about your own family history.

There is one experience which I found quite different in this particular paper chase, though, involving the obituaries of this couple. I need to mention, first, that the absence of any obituaries here in this Kelly series is due to the possibility that some of the grandchildren of Patrick and Emma Kelly may still be alive. In respect of these people’s privacy, I’ve opted to omit transcribing any record of those (though they are certainly available elsewhere online). Then, too, I’d like to extend an invitation to anyone reading this series who realizes that you are related to this line: please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

The one experience I gleaned from researching the story of Willard and Mildred helped encourage me to press on, even when results don’t seem to yield anything promising. There are apparently road blocks in the journey to document our families’ stories that are not insurmountable. Having the ability to access information so easily via online resources has, in one way, weakened our research muscles that would otherwise push us to get out there and find what we need.

I’d like to talk more about that tomorrow.

Scrambled Names and Missing Data

By the time we reach Emma Carle Kelly’s seventh child, you’d think we’d have the hang of these doubtful documentations. We’ve certainly had our practice keeping things straight for her other children—Helen, Stephen and Emmet—to say the least!

With Patrick and Emma’s baby girl born March 20, 1911, it all begins to amount to so much déjà vu.

To start off with, on April 2, 1911, the Kellys’ new arrival was baptized—as were all their children—at Saint Patrick Church in downtown Fort Wayne. While I had only the microfilmed version of the document to rely on (and believe me, it was difficult to read), I could barely make out the details of the sponsors’ names: Henry and Anna Peters.

I think.

I have no idea who that couple was. If relatives, they are not any I’ve discovered yet. If friends, well…welcome to a new century, where people were not so set on clustering around extended family to the exclusion of everyone else.

About the time of this happy occasion at church, the county government was celebrating in their own kind of way—by documenting the child’s name as Anna Marie Kelly.

While Anna Marie has a nice ring to it, as the child grew up, apparently she didn’t think so. Witness the eight year old daughter of Patrick and Emma in the 1920 census: listed as Marie. Check her out in the 1930 census: now claiming her name as Marie A. Kelly.

When she married—three days before her twenty-sixth birthday—she signed her name to the marriage license application as Marie Ann Kelly.

Something tells me an individual and her own parents would know better than a government hireling what her name was.

Becoming Marie A. Boyd—her new married name—didn’t mean the end of name problems. Thankfully, we now had her husband’s name to help track the record and keep this Kelly daughter separate from the other Marie A. Boyds in town.

Our Marie married a man by the name of Paul Brice Boyd. Son of Whitley County, Indiana, transplants to Fort Wayne—Alfred Leroy and Cora Ellen Agnes Collins Boyd—Paul was actually a Fort Wayne native. The young couple stayed in Fort Wayne their entire life, as did, apparently, their two children—a daughter and a son, whom they named after Paul’s brother.

I say apparently, because I have no way to trace that through the end of Marie’s life story. You see, while I can find her husband’s obituary—published in The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette on Thursday, November 28, 1974, two days after his death—I can’t find Marie’s obituary.

Well, let me amend that. I can find an obituary for Marie A. Boyd. There is one dated February 27, 1979, in the Gazette. But that would never do. For one thing, Marie was mentioned as a survivor in her sister Helen’s 1985 obituary. Then, there is the 1986 obituary of her baby sister, whom we’ve not yet met, which also listed her among the family’s survivors. Don’t think there are any reporting errors there.

So, who is this other Marie A. Boyd?

It appears that this other woman was, herself, victim of some clerical reporting errors.

To witness, scroll down the Boyd listings for the Allen County area obituaries to see the entry for Marie A. Boyd. See? The print date was 1979. (You can also scroll a little further to see the print date for Paul Boyd’s own obituary.)

Then, take a look at the Fort Wayne Catholic Cemetery burial listings for all Boyd entries through 1983, kindly provided to us through the efforts of the Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library.

Notice the entry for Paul Boyd’s burial. It lines up fairly well with the November 28, 1974, obituary entry we just saw. Also, notice the fine print on his cemetery details. It notes his next of kin to be his wife, Marie A. Boyd.

I’m sure it hasn’t been lost on you, if you are checking all these links as I’ve provided them, that there is a burial entry for a Marie A. Boyd listed just above Paul’s entry. However, in addition to showing a different burial plot, you may have noticed that this time, her record specified what that A stood for: Alma.

In fact, her given date of death matches that of the mistaken obituary which I’ve been disabused of thinking was our Kelly descendant. Note, too, that this Marie A. Boyd had her daughter Jean Neher listed as next of kin. That is not a name in our Kelly family tree.

The clerical issue popped up when I started pursuing this Marie Alma’s information. Thankfully—and this is sometimes a hit-or-miss proposition when researching burials—not only did Find-A-Grave have an entry for this woman, but a volunteer provided additional information. Evidently, she was actually known as Alma Marie Gocke Boyd, and her headstone read Alma M. Boyd. While relying on headstones hasn’t worked too well in the past for me, all this is enough to satisfy me that the 1979 passing of that “Marie A. Boyd” was not for our Marie, but for Alma.

Just to be sure, though, I took a look under Boyd listings, 1984 through 1993, in the Catholic Cemetery records at the Genealogy Center, for our Marie’s given date of death in 1989—and there she was! So, too, for the Find-A-Grave page, though there was precious little information provided.

But what about Marie's obituary? Where was it? Was she really supposed to be listed as Anna Marie instead of Marie Ann? Believe me, I tried all those variations in looking up any leads, with no luck. While I’d love to find Marie’s obituary to trace her line forward and possibly connect with distant cousins, the information I’ve already gleaned will have to suffice.

Whether her memory was perpetuated through the device of an obituary or not—whether in Fort Wayne or wherever her children may have settled by the 1980s—there are still tokens of her life left behind that can help me recreate a bit of who this Kelly descendant was.

As for those who knew her best, I’m sure she still lives on in their memory.

The Shrinking Household

As we go down the list of Patrick and Emma Carle Kelly’s children and follow their life stories, we eventually get to the younger siblings whose arrival in the household was ten years or more after that of the firstborn. The last three children in the Kelly household happen to all be daughters.

Of those three youngest daughters, the one we’ll focus on today happened to be the one who married next to last of the daughters, so she was still showing in her mother’s household for the 1940 census, along with her brother Stephen, whom we met yesterday, and her oldest sister Kathryn.

It was a challenge to find any information on this particular daughter. With a name like Helen Kelly—sounding so close to that of the by-then well known Helen Keller—perhaps our Helen was doomed to be one of those having a name claimed by many others. At least, that’s the way it seemed in the Fort Wayne newspapers.

Apparently, there was a Helen Kelly marching through Allen County divorce court reports for quite a while, claiming she needed release from her husband and his unbearable drinking ways. She, thankfully, predated our Helen’s adult years by half a decade.

Not to be outdone, there was a Miss Helen Kelly, from Las Vegas, New Mexico, whose name was splashed about the Society pages with the announcement that she was a guest of this or that resident of Fort Wayne. She seemed quite the popular visitor—but again, she was not our Helen Kelly.

My most favorite not-our-Helen story was that of the Helen Kelly who had married a man by name of Gould, then decided to divorce him in favor of a marriage to a “prince of Albania.”

As for our own Helen Kelly, well, I didn’t find much in those Fort Wayne newspapers. Perhaps like most younger children in large families, she was on the receiving end of the hand-me-downs of life.

I do know that she was born March 29, 1909, in Fort Wayne, and that she lived her entire life in that city.

I also know that, on June 22, 1940, she married a man by the name of John Gradel—a German-born immigrant whose widowed mother still lived in Germany.

I’ve often wondered what worries, fears or even risks Helen got swept into with that decision to marry. On the eve of her marriage, her future mother-in-law was most likely living in harm’s way as war began ravaging the European continent. Then, too, with the soon-approaching involvement of the United States in World War II, recent German immigrants to America were seen with increasing hostility—even threat of internment.

Whether that became part of the narrative for Helen and John’s life story, I had no way of knowing, until recently.

At first, all I could tell of their family story was that, five years after their marriage, they had a son—their only child—Michael, who died at the age of sixty two in 2008. From his obituary, I learned that Michael was a Vietnam vet and, other than his service abroad, he lived and worked in Fort Wayne until the point of his retirement.

Perhaps Michael’s service in the military, it turns out, was inspired by his father’s own example. Though a German immigrant himself, John Gradel was a United States Army veteran of World War II. His likely absence from the home during that time may be the very explanation for the family’s one and only child not being born until five years after John and Helen were married.

If it weren’t for those brief mentions of service in the obituaries of both Helen’s husband and that of her son, there would be very little detail to glean about the woman or her family life. Her own obituary, printed shortly after her death on July 10, 1985, included only the customary list of family survivors. Perhaps she carried on the tradition of her mother and remained a stay-at-home mom in an age in which women were no longer doing so, for there was no mention of occupation, affiliations or associations.

As a final nod to family tradition, the brief obituary mentioned one more custom: Helen Kelly Gradel was buried in the Catholic Cemetery in the hometown she never left: Fort Wayne.

The Instructions Said, “Hold”

Every now and then, in reviewing documentation for the various ancestors I’ve researched, I run across curious handwritten notes, meant for clerical eyes only. Such was the case last year when I stumbled upon the underlined instructions added to my husband’s maternal grandparents’ marriage license: “Don’t Publish Ages.”

As I progress through his Kelly family lines, with the next son of Patrick and Emma Carle Kelly, I’m confronted with another such enigmatic note.

Stephen C. Kelly, arriving on June 7, 1907, was no stranger to clerical issues. After all, his very date of birth didn’t escape documentation problems. The Allen County Index of Births assured me that Stephen arrived on June 7. Now, looking back on this after having discovered the discrepancies in his brother Emmet’s records (as we saw yesterday), I should have looked more closely. But how was I to know when I was hand-cranking my way through the microfilm of Saint Patrick’s Church baptismal records? I was just overjoyed that I found anything, period.

You’d think that seeing his name on the baptismal record spelled as Stephan Carroll Kelley might have given me a clue. But no. I chalked it up to the usual Kelly-versus-Kelley recordkeeping, and moved on from there.

Then I got to his marriage record and found other discrepancies. Like a totally different middle name: Carle.

Okay, I can understand maybe a hard of hearing priest not getting it that the boy’s middle name was intended to be his mother’s maiden name. After all, naming a boy Carroll back then wasn’t as unusual as it might seem today.

Sometimes I don’t know when to be patient and understanding of those entrusted with passing on clerical records, and when to realize I should keep looking for the real name.

I did have a few outside clues about Stephen and his early life, though. Unlike his older brother Emmet, Stephen showed up in a few warm fuzzy news reports, like when the May 6, 1916, Fort Wayne News published his name among those—including his cousin Celeste Phillips—receiving First Communion at Saint Patrick Church. And there was even his photo in The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, to the far left in the front row of graduates from the church’s grammar school, on June 12, 1921.

But then, there was that marriage license application.

In our age of at-your-fingertips, scanned and digitally-reproduced, duly indexed documents, there was not one entry for Stephen Kelly’s marriage license at FamilySearch.org, but three.

I don’t know whether it was just coincidentally the time for the Allen County bureaucrats to change their format for marriage license applications, but Stephen’s decision to finally give up bachelorhood—he was, after all, still living as a single man in his widowed mother’s home, according to the 1940 census—came at a time when the county seemed to tap dance around the changes.

First, for his license application, there was a blank page—all except for the section on the very bottom of the empty form, where Stephen C. Kelly and Maxine Morton Griner were duly noted as joined in marriage by Judge H. Wayne on April 6, 1946.

That was the customary form that started off with the heading, “Application is hereby made for a License for the Marriage of,” and the entire body of the form left blank. I had seen that form completed and on file for so many of Stephen’s older Kelly cousins—the left side completed by the groom, the right reserved for the bride. Why was his left blank—all except for the bottom, where both the clerk and the Judge signed and completed their piece?

There was more, thankfully. A second scanned entry appeared to be an attachment stapled to the usual application. It had blank lines to be completed only by the bride. From this form, I gleaned her date of birth—December 28, 1919, being twelve and a half years younger than her intended—and that she was daughter of city policeman Rex Morton and his estranged wife (and tavern owner) Alice Carey Morton. Sounded like an interesting couple in their own right.

I also learned that this was Maxine’s second marriage; later, I learned that she had already had a son from her first marriage.

Unlike the old, side-by-side applications, that newer second page only yielded information on the bride. It took a third application page—once again, stapled onto an old form—to glean the information on our groom. This document—when I finally got to it—became the first glimpse I had of Stephen’s father’s middle name (his middle initial “T” standing for Timothy).

It also provided me that date of birth that didn’t quite line up to what I had previously found.

Perhaps I should just heave a sigh and tell myself, “Join the club.” There are so many discrepancies out there when it comes to researching this family history stuff. Surely I am not the first to uncover these research woes. All you can do is collect the documents, record your sources, and fervently hope you haven’t just uncovered some strange sort of coincidence—like two people with the same name and same parentage born one day apart in the same city.

So there it was: Stephen’s application no doubt stapled above that of his wife, all attached to the blank sheet with the judge’s signature at the bottom. Finding each page separately was alarming, but once it was all put together, it made sense. Maybe that was the week for changing application forms in Allen County. Who knows.

At this point, the question I have is: why did someone write and underline the word, “Hold” at the top of Stephen’s license application?

Now that’s what I’d really like to know.

Not Clowning Around

As I go through the descendants of the corollary lines in my husband’s Kelly families, it all seems so routine to list each member of the family and let them have their moment of online fame in the retelling of their life story.

When I get to the next son of Patrick and Emma Carle Kelly, though, I have to stop and smile. Unbeknownst to this 1903 arrival, his name would soon become a well-known and beloved name not only in the United States, but in many other countries as well.

But not because of him. It would be because of someone else who, though coincidentally sharing the same name, was neither related to nor known by him.

That name was Emmett Kelly.

Believe me, the chance encounter with that name in my family history research was enough to cause me to pause and dig in, searching for any possible connections. Add to that the secondary coincidence that the “real” Emmett Kelly was buried in Lafayette—the very Indiana town where our other Kelly line had settled since the 1850s. I was barely two months into writing this blog when I first posted on my attempts. I assure you, I was hoping for some confirmations.

As it turned out, there was no connection—at least, as far as I can determine up to this point. Of course, that doesn’t mean I won’t stop trying. There is that second Kelly line I’ve yet to ponder, once I can find my way around a certain brick wall.

Back in Fort Wayne, where this Kelly family had been since the late 1860s, Patrick’s son was baptized at the family’s church—Saint Patrick—on October 25, 1903. His name was recorded on the baptismal certificate as “Patrick Emmit” and his godparents were listed as “William Steavens” and Lillian Dalton.

Someone obviously was very spelling-challenged.

I have to pause at this juncture and admit, once again, my sense that choice of godparents was, typically, reserved for relatives is only partially vindicated with this couple’s selection. William “Steavens” is, of course, my husband’s grandfather, Will, whom we’ve already met through both the series on his father, John Kelly Stevens in Fort Wayne, and that of his wife, Agnes Tully’s family in Chicago. Will, by this time nineteen himself, was cousin to this little child he was promising to sponsor in 1903.

As far as Lillian Dalton goes…well, I have no idea who she was. Maybe that is someone I’ll need to follow up on. Or not. She may just be a family friend.

Apparently, Patrick’s newly arrived son, baptized on this date in 1903, was victim of more than one clerical error. The date of birth was listed there as October 21, 1903. However, in an index of Allen County births drawn up by the Indiana Works Progress Administration, the birth was reported as occurring on October 20.

In addition, it seems that, despite the entry in the baptismal record, his middle name was intended to be Patrick, not his first name. Which is a shame, for not only was he deprived of bearing his father’s name as his own first name, but that choice subjected him to multiple spelling variations of his subsequently-designated first name.

Starting with the priest’s recording of the spelling as Emmit, a subsequent Cathedral priest—whose name just happened to be Robert Emmet Kelly—may have influenced how those in the Fort Wayne Catholic community naturally assumed this child’s name should be spelled as well: one “t,” not two. A sign of further confusion, a census taker recorded his name as Emet, removing not only that final “t,” but an additional “m” as well.

As if this weren’t enough, once the “real” Emmett Kelly became better known, people assumed our Emmet would follow suit and spell his name the same way.

In his growing up years in Fort Wayne, our Emmet evidently attended the same parochial school associated with his family’s parish as had his older siblings. Sometime after the 1920 census and before his marriage in 1926, Emmet finished his schooling and headed for the big city—Chicago, in this case—for better employment prospects. For almost his entire working career, he served as pressman for the Chicago Tribune.

After establishing his career, Emmet returned to Fort Wayne to marry Mildred L. Hanes, daughter of Anthony and Cora Lily Kimes Hanes, on August 24, 1926. They immediately set up housekeeping in the Chicago area, where they became proud parents of four sons and one daughter (who died in infancy).

After a full life of sixty eight years, Emmet returned to Fort Wayne one final time. Upon his passing on July 12, 1972, he was laid to rest in the same cemetery in his hometown where his infant daughter and one son were already buried. Ironically, church records now were more generous in bestowing superfluous consonants, and his cemetery record had him listed as Emmett—perhaps following suit of the Chicago and Fort Wayne newspapers in which his obituaries had been published.

Set in stone at last, though, was the spelling with which he had been known throughout his growing up years: Emmet P. Kelly.

We can only presume that, this time, they got it right.

A Growing Family

While we’ve already met the oldest of Patrick and Emma Kelly’s children, it may be easier, in meeting the rest of the large Kelly family, to allow the census records to serve as a group introduction, before meeting each one of them individually.

Unlike the era in which Patrick’s family emigrated from their homeland, poverty-stricken Ireland, the generation in America, where Patrick raised his own family, was obviously blessed. There were still the risks of epidemics and being caught unawares by other rampant diseases, but life in a family in which jobs provided a steady income with which to purchase needed food and supplies had its impact on how many of the family’s offspring survived childhood.

All told, there were eight children in the Patrick Kelly family. As Patrick, himself, was the first in his own family to be born in the New World, he likely received part of the blessing of the new land to pass along to his descendants. By the time of his marriage to the widow Emma Carle Brown, he already had a steady job and the means to provide for a sizeable family.

Following the arrival of Emma and her son Frederick, the couple announced the birth of their daughter Kathryn in September of 1900. In predictable fashion, about a year and a half later, they welcomed their son John Clifford Kelly. Moving along at about the same clip, another son—Emmet Patrick Kelly—arrived in the fall of 1903. After an uncharacteristic gap of three and a half years—causing me to suspect the death of an infant, a miscarriage, or other such loss—another son, Stephen, arrived in 1907. And just to provide some variety, nearly two years later, a daughter arrived in 1909: Helen Margaret.

The snapshot of that tally is handily provided in the form of the 1910 census for Fort Wayne, which shows Patrick employed as an engineer with the city’s Water Works division. His wife, Emma, declared herself to be mother of six children, all of whom were living at the time of the census, dismissing my speculation about the gap between sons Emmet and Stephen.

The family tally, however, was not yet completed. The best place to observe the entire family unit intact was in the next census record, for 1920. There, completing the family circle, were daughters Anna Marie, arriving in March, 1911, and Mildred Agnes, born in March, 1917.

Each of them had their own story—with details as varied as the individuals in a large family can produce. Most of them remained in Fort Wayne their entire life, although a few moved out of state as they pursued their own careers.

In following each of these Kelly children’s own lines, I could see the fingerprints of the unfolding timeline of the twentieth century imprint itself on their destinies. In some ways, they were each children of their times, as much as they were children of Patrick and Emma. And those times allowed them each to see great changes in what was still accepted—and what was, ultimately, discarded as “old fashioned.”

The Oldest in the Family

Sometimes, young widows are fortunate to find a second opportunity for love, marriage and family. In the case of the young widow Emma Carle Brown, who had just suffered through the turmoil of losing her husband of three months to suicide, we’ve already discovered that she later married Patrick Kelly of Fort Wayne—he’s the one linked to our Stevens family, and the reason I’m pursuing more information on this family line.

What was somewhat unusual about Patrick and Emma’s situation was that Emma entered this second marriage with a two-year-old son while Patrick, unlike many of that era marrying widows, was a bachelor when he and Emma wed.

The newly formed Kelly family eventually boasted eight children—four girls and four boys. That first son, though, was step-son to Patrick, and half-sibling to the other seven children.

Since the 1900 census showed the new Kelly family unit with Frederick bearing his own father’s surname, I wasn’t sure how to trace him through the timeline of the 1900s. He apparently assumed the same surname as the rest of the family for the 1910 and 1920 census records. But what would he do, once he was on his own? Keep his step-father’s name, or revert to the name of his birth?

It was the World War I draft registration card Frederick filled out in 1918 that confirmed that, out on his own, he still chose to employ the surname of his adopted father, rather than that of his natural father. (The draft registration form, by the way, also was my first clue as to what the “W” in his mother’s name might signify: Walberga.)

Thankfully, after the 1920 census—the last census record for which son Frederick was still in the home of Patrick Kelly—it was not difficult to locate a marriage license for him. On January 2, 1926, Frederick married Myrtle Trumbull, daughter of Harvey and Della Vandeford Trumbull. Their ceremony was in Fort Wayne.

Somewhere beyond that point, Frederick found work in Detroit, Michigan, and for the subsequent two census reports, he and his family—still under the Kelly surname—lived there.  Frederick and Myrtle must have been in Detroit shortly after their wedding, for their oldest daughter—Rosella, according to the 1930 census, Rosalie if you rely on the 1940 version—was born in Michigan somewhere around 1927.

When I first started researching this line, I had often wondered, “What if he changed his name?” How could I track this family’s line? But apparently, there was enough assurance in this relationship between step-father and step-son for the bond to remain. Perhaps it was because Patrick was the only father Frederick would be able to remember, coming into the relationship at such a young age. Whatever the reason, it does make me wish I knew more about the day-to-day relationships between first-born Frederick and all the half-siblings that followed him into the Kelly family.

Back on Track

While diversions—some planned, some unforeseen—take us away from our intended research projects, eventually we need to get back to the stated plan. Yes, my recent trip back to my home-away-from-home—Columbus, Ohio—bequeathed me with raw material to fuel more family history research on my DAR-potential maternal McClellan line and related Davis and Broyles lines, but I need to recall that stated purpose toward which I had already been working.

Despite this newfound pile of newspaper clippings and old letters just begging me to follow the “ooh, shiny” trail, including details on my grandfather Davis—who, in one document, listed his occupation as “Railroad Man”—I think it would be wiser to stick with The Plan I’ve already laid out.

That Plan, if you remember, was based on the fact that my daughter intends to spend a semester of her college career abroad in Ireland. And, if you remember, my husband’s heritage—at least on his father’s side—was one hundred percent Irish descendant, so why waste an opportunity like that for further research? If I do get the chance to travel to Ireland during that time, I want to hit the ground running when I get there.

The target date for this opportunity is fall semester next year. While September, 2014, seems light years away at this point, it will—I guarantee it—get here before I manage to get ready.

Not that I haven’t been tempted to stray from the research path already. I confess I’ve succumbed to that urge time and again.

So, much as I know some of you will be curious to see how my maternal family’s link unfolds with “Railroad Man,” for now, I think it best for us to set aside this treasure trove for later study and return to the point at which we left Patrick Kelly of my husband’s Irish immigrant line.

Tomorrow, we’ll pick up the narrative from where we had left Patrick’s wife—the former Emma Carle Brown—after the death of her first husband, and take a look at the life Patrick and Emma had together in Fort Wayne, Indiana, as they raised their large family in the early 1900s.

The One Person We Forgot to Remember

File this one away as a postscript to a postscript. Sometimes, that is exactly what happens to the smallest, the youngest, the least significant—especially in the wake of great turmoil: they get forgotten.

We need to go back, sweep aside all the angst and drama and remind ourselves of a series of dates and events leading up to the point of John Brown’s death. Remember, it was April 22, 1897, when Emma Carle and John H. Brown were married in Logansport, Indiana. About three months later came John’s suicide on July 19, for which the four town newspapers erupted with three days run of reporting.

In the quiet following this tragedy, Emma Carle Brown gave birth to a son, whom she named Fred William Brown. Baptised February 20, 1898, Emma’s son most likely was born on January 29.

For those of you prone to whip out a calculator at the slightest provocation, you have probably already deduced that this new arrival in January, 1898, was indeed a son of the now-deceased John H. Brown. Not only that, but you most likely realize that his young mother was not only going through the trauma of the death of her husband that preceding July, but was also in the throes of morning sickness.

Whatever Emma lived through during that difficult time in July, her yet-unborn son was also living through with her. While no one was yet aware of his presence, in some way, he was very aware of the anguish occurring all around him.

We hold an unquestioned belief that what occurs to the people we are close to—those among our family and friends whose lives are intertwined with ours—has repercussions in our own lives, too. Understandably, what befell Emma Carle Brown that July day when her husband chose to end his life had repercussions in her life from that day forward.

What I can’t help but wonder is what impact that same event had on the one person of whom no one on that awful day was yet even aware.

Post Script

In every episode, no matter how small or how immense, there is always room for some gratitude.

The Logansport Times had reported that, as widow of a Cigar Maker’s Union member, Emma stood to receive a death benefit. While the Logansport newspapers varied in their reports of the amount bestowed upon her—amounts cited ranged from $200 to $350—whatever the amount was, you can be sure she did, in the end, receive it. In that era, I’m sure the young widow was grateful for whatever help she could receive in an age when women bereft of their husbands had little recourse for supporting themselves.

Shortly after the ordeal was over and the uproar over the attempt had settled down, a simply-worded letter appeared in the Logansport Pharos Tribune on July 22, 1897:

Card of Thanks.

We wish to return our thanks to the neighbors and friends and especially to the Cigarmakers union for kindness shown us during our late sad bereavement.

            Mrs. Emma Brown.

            Mrs. Ellen Brown.

            Miss Ella Brown.

Goin’ Fishin’

Not only did the unfolding of John Brown’s drama provide us with clues about his personal history, but the saga divulged some information about his own family. As the newspapers put it—or, more specifically, the one newspaper which took the greatest editorial liberties of the four published in Logansport, Indiana—John Brown’s brothers seemed not to care very much for his dilemma. It seemed as if the Logansport Times saw his brothers as outright cold—nearly inhuman in their lack of care.

While that may seem surprising, I can vouch for such a response. In working in the mental health field for years, especially with parents of grown children with mental health challenges, I’ve come to recognize that resignation that to the uninitiated eye comes across as an uncaring attitude. These were the family members who had tried everything—and, despite pouring their every effort over a lifetime into that one troubled child, have only desperation and exhaustion to show for it all.

From the newspaper reports, we can glean that John Brown had at least two brothers—and that neither seemed particularly warm in the concern they exhibited toward their brother in his current plight. Speaking of John, the Times reported on July 23, 1897,

While lying on the tobacco boxes in the cigar shop he was surrounded by curious spectators. Two brothers were also there, and there was about as much feeling exhibited as if he had been a hog. One brother, who is deaf and dumb, was there soon after it was known that John had taken poison. After a while he sent for the other brother, who was fishing in Eel river.

The Logansport Journal had reported that, in the process of trying to save John’s life that day, as John fought off all attempts to save him, he “almost bit the finger of his brother off when he tried to pry his mouth open.”

The Times described the struggle in which one of the brothers, upon arriving at the scene, went immediately to work pouring an antidote down John’s mouth. After John continually rebuffed his brother’s efforts, the man cursed him and said, “Well, if you won’t take it, then…die.”

Off the one brother went, with the other calling after him, asking where he was going. To the amazement of all, he replied, “Goin’ fishin’.”

I can only imagine how heartless this must have sounded to onlookers at such a desperate scene. On the other hand, the scenario brings to mind the possibility that this might have been a re-run of countless such unfolding dramas over the life of these three men.

Along with this vignette provided in the Times, the report also provided another family clue: one of the brothers was listed as “deaf and dumb.” Having been reported to have carried on a conversation with his brother, the man obviously was not totally unable to hear, nor was he “dumb” (as the vernacular of the day put it). However, that clue in the Times leads me to believe that this 1880 census page for Cass County may contain the household of our John Brown. For those of you able to access Ancestry.com, take note of the entry alongside youngest son William: “Don’t hear or talk well.”

If this, indeed, is the family of our John Brown, we at least can now be certain we have the correct John Brown. Son of brick mason William Brown and his wife Ellen, John was the middle son, flanked by older brother James and younger William. In addition to the three boys, the Browns also had an older daughter, Eloise.

In this family constellation, John was entered as a nine year old—putting his birth in Indiana at about 1871. At this point, there is no way to know whether the family had suffered any dysfunctionality, any traumatic loss, or any other cause triggering John’s later agony. Perhaps further examination of historic newspaper collections may reveal other clues.

For now, however, I’ll defer to any direct family descendants to take up that search. You see, John Brown’s drama only serves to launch me into the story of how his young bride, Emma, eventually became part of our Kelly family.

No Charm in Life

Thinking about the tumultuous past of John Brown of Logansport, Indiana, prior to his 1897 death, I can’t help but wonder about the relationship he had with his bride, the former Emma W. Carle. Were comments like “I don’t know what she saw in him” on every wagging tongue in town? After all, it was a short three months between the time this bride and groom promised each other, “I do” until the time he decided, “I don’t.”

Reading the details in the all-too-chatty local newspapers—four different publications, at last count—I began to wonder the same thing, myself. What did possess the young Emma Carle to marry the man?

On the day after the suicide attempt, the Logansport Journal had declared in its headlines that John Brown “Took Enough Paris Green to Kill Ten Ordinary Men.” They, too, naturally pondered the same question I did.

What motive there could have been for the determined and successful effort at self-destruction is hard to find. Brown was a little over twenty-five years old, had been married, and happily, so far as known to his friends, for about three months.

In attempting to answer the question that must have been on everyone’s mind, the Journal reflected,

Before his marriage Brown had been addicted to drink, but for the past few months had not been drinking at all until last week, when he began drinking and laid off work all week.

The rhetorically-charged Logansport Times advanced its own speculation:

For years before his marriage he had been a hard drinker, but had stopped a short time prior to the marriage, and this was his first spree since his marriage. He was twenty-six years of age, and we believe he had spent ten years of this time a drunkard. The writer remembers well of seeing him reeling drunk as long as eight or ten years ago.

I can’t help but imagine a scenario in which a young man, beleaguered with an overwhelming and destructive habit, somehow found a way to rise to the occasion when catching a glimpse of a better option. Was Emma a “prize” that impelled the young man to try his best to re-invent himself? What a tragic story line—if only this were pulp fiction.

But it wasn’t. This was real life. And someone had to live through it—in fact, many someones. What became of John Brown—admittedly through his own “choice”—was something that not only he had to endure, but several members of his family had to bear as well.

If you’ve been reading along with me for any length of time, perhaps you recall my own immediate family’s struggle with some of the same difficulties. This is not a scenario for which moralizing people need merely to admonish, “tsk, tsk,” and move on. If I were a guessing person—and, being the writer here, I will take that liberty—I would say John Brown was suffering from some internal difficulty which no professional advisor of that time was equipped to resolve. He may have suffered from lifelong, deep depression—or possibly even a mild form of some mental illness for which his only relief of symptoms was to self-medicate with alcohol. Alcohol, then, became his respite from suffering, as ill-equipped as the substance might have been to solve for the need it addressed.

Of course, the question still stands: if that were so, what enabled him to rise above those difficulties to achieve the socially-acceptable appearance of sobriety long enough to snag a beautiful young bride? Was it, indeed, possible for him to do this? Or, having attempted it, did he discover the demons that drove him were insurmountable, after all?

The more I consider the plight of the unfortunate John Brown, the more I pity him, and the less I’m prone to sanction his actions. While I—and, certainly, his immediate family—wish it were otherwise, I can’t fault him for the eventual path he found himself taking.

Perhaps that very realization dawned on some people of his small town, too. Mercifully, as one newspaper observed,

His demise was peaceful, not being marked by any of his struggles earlier in the day.

Sometimes, in the face of life’s unfolding dramas, those party to the tragedy just need such closure.

Finding What’s Right

If you do genealogical research long enough, you will realize that even the most reliable of resources occasionally delivers error-ridden information. If you’ve been reading along here at A Family Tapestry for any time, you’ve witnessed (along with me) the discovery of headstones engraved with misinformation, death certificates supplying wrong names or dates—not to mention, the numerous journalistic errors in newspapers from across the fruited plain.

Take the report, in the continuing saga of our John Brown of Logansport, Indiana, from the July 21, 1897, Pharos Tribune. Even though the paper carried the news of the attempted suicide every day starting on Monday the nineteenth, the Wednesday edition was incorrectly dated with the year as 1896 rather than the correct 1897.

Perhaps it is no wonder, then, that we were confronted with the puzzling possibility of two different dates of death in Cass County’s own records. As mentioned in Saturday’s post, here were the entries I had found for John Brown:

• age 26, died July 19, 1897, book 8, page 123
• age 26, died July 21, 1897, book 8, page 132
• age 26, died July 19, 1897, book CH-1, page 86.

Having read every newspaper entry on the saga that was available online, I think I’ve come up with a reason for the discrepancy. First, if you recall, what originally looked like a doomed scenario for young John occurred on Monday, July 19. Could the Cass County officials have just made the assumption that there was no way John could have survived his ordeal, writing him off on that very day? That would be entry number one in the death records.

Then, after duly noting the event in official governmental documents before close of the business day, John’s miraculous revival occurred and was reported in the newspapers. While the correct conclusion of the matter was eventually announced, it so happened that the town’s newspaper—the Pharos Tribune—also had a weekly edition, in which the updated report appeared on the following Wednesday, July 21. Could someone have carelessly glanced at the updated headline underneath the weekly’s rerun of the original report, and presumed death came on the date of the report (Wednesday) instead of the original (and correct) Monday in which it actually occurred?

Of course, there would have been the possibility that there were two different men by the name John Brown, both of the same age, who died two days apart. And yes, I did research that possibility. You may be interested to know there was another John Brown in Logansport at that time—and he did die…but not until one year later.

Oh, one more thing: this other John Brown had a different middle initial.

Whether my supposed scenario explains the recording discrepancy or not, one thing I can be sure of: by July 24, 1897, when the burial took place, John H. Brown was most certainly dead.

I don’t mean to belabor the point merely for the petty cause of ascertaining the correct of two close given dates of death. I have other reasons for pursuing this tale further. For one thing, the many reports of this event in downtown Logansport met the need to know of many curious townspeople.

Beyond that, though, those several newspaper entries also provide us with a glimpse into the interpersonal dynamics of Emma Carle Brown Kelly’s family life. To see the details of these lives, unfortunately, presents me with several more questions about that situation into which she had—only three months prior—agreed to join her own life and fortune.

Mounting a Steep Learning Curve

Do you know what Paris Green is? Neither did I, before this week.

Researching what became of John Brown—Emma Carle Brown Kelly’s short-lived first husband—became my opportunity to discover what Paris Green is. Before this, I had never heard of it.

After finding two different dates of death given for John Brown’s demise in Cass County, Indiana—those dates being only two days apart—my next challenge was to find an online source for local newspapers of that time period. Thankfully, NewspaperArchive.com has a number of publications in Logansport from July, 1897—yielding several detailed reports of what became of our John Brown.

Admittedly, the local newspapers had no qualms about publishing the gory details of John Brown’s unexpected ordeal—something I shouldn’t have been surprised to see, considering what nearby Fort Wayne newspapers had printed when it came to Emma’s future brother in law, Patrick Phillips, and his sudden end. Actually, one newspaper turned out to be quite melodramatic as well as dogmatic in its portrayal of the Brown family crisis.

With a bold headline coming directly to the point, the Monday, July 19, 1897, Logansport Pharos Tribune announced “SUICIDE,” followed by the typical run-on sub-headings of the era:

            “Attempted by John Brown, the Cigarmaker.

            “Badly Effected With the Blues, He Swallowed Two Ounces of Paris Green.

            “The Stomach Pump Applied and He is Now Thought to be Out of Danger.”

The episode was tumultuous, starting with the man’s arrival at work:

            About 1 o’clock this afternoon while laboring under a bad attack of the blues, John Brown, the well known cigar maker, purchased two ounces of paris green at Johnston’s drug store, then proceeding to the court house pump on North street, downed all the stuff at one swallow.

            Shortly after he showed up at Walter Closson’s cigar factory, on Broadway, where he had been employed…

whereupon he proceeded to exhibit symptoms of his body’s attempt to reject the substance. (For those not burdened with weak stomachs, you are welcome to read the description of the scenario here—if you are not a NewspaperArchive.com subscriber, continue to scroll down the page anyhow to view the article, for the NewspaperArchive.com organization permits one or two complementary views per day.)

Although I could presume from the context of the report what Paris Green might be, just to be sure, I took a look at the Wikipedia entry. Sure enough, Paris Green was the name for a rat poison reported to have once been used in Paris sewers. It has also been used as an insecticide. Despite all this, incredibly, owing to its vivid green color, it was also valued as a pigment by artists. Containing a form of arsenic, among other chemicals, Paris Green is a highly toxic mixture.

Apparently struggling with depression, the young John Brown had been attempting to self-medicate by the use of alcohol which, of course, brings on its own set of problems. Somewhere in the mix, he reached the conclusion that his only way out was to end his own life, which he attempted with this definitive gesture.

Arriving at work upon onset of symptoms, however, became a well-timed move in his benefit, for alarmed fellow workers sent immediately for medical help. It took two doctors and several assistants’ efforts to do quickly what needed to be done.

After the crisis subsided, as the Pharos Tribune concluded for its Logansport readers,

            Upon being pronounced out of danger Brown was taken to his home on Westside.

            It was a narrow escape and the young man ought to profit by the experience. He has everything to live for—a young and devoted wife, and an aged mother and a host of friends to encourage him in all his efforts to do right and live right.

Unfortunately, the Pharos Tribune reported its conclusions a bit too soon.

What Became of John Brown?

When searching for family history information on someone with a name as common as John Brown, you know you have to do a thorough search—and likely will unearth several men with the same name, even in a town as small as Logansport, Indiana. But finding several different dates of death for the same man? Well, you only die once, they say—but apparently county officials seemed to think our John Brown died on two different dates.

When I checked on the Cass County records, years ago, to figure out what might have happened to the first husband of Emma Carle Brown Kelly, my only online resource was an index of available death records. Keeping in mind there might be more than one man named John Brown—incidentally, there were two John Browns in town at that time—I was careful to look for all entries under that name.

Setting my parameters for possible dates of death—before Emma’s second marriage to Patrick Kelly in Fort Wayne in 1900 and after her first marriage with John in April, 1897—I tiptoed my way very carefully through all the entries for the name Brown in the Cass County death index.

Here’s what I found for John Brown:

• age 26, died July 19, 1897, book 8, page 123
• age 26, died July 21, 1897, book 8, page 132
• age 26, died July 19, 1897, book CH-1, page 86.

Of course, being an index, it presented the possibility that any of these entries could contain errors. The second entry, for instance, could just be a clerical error in the transposition of the digits in the page number given. But how would that explain the differing dates of death?

To complicate matters, the same details were also presented under a name entered as “Jonathan Brown.”

Without being able to view the actual documentation myself, it would be hard to tell what was going on here. After all, John Brown is a fairly common name. But two different dates of death—only two days apart—for two men by the same name in the same small town? That goes far beyond a mere case of common names.

Heading to the cemetery, I hoped to find a clue to straighten out this puzzle. The most likely burial place for our John Brown in Logansport was at what is now called Mount Hope Cemetery. Mount Hope is a sizeable place, claiming over thirty three thousand interments. I’ve been delighted to discover that—now—an active volunteer program has insured that burial records are accessible online in more than one resource.

When I first was ferreting out this mystery, however, all I had at my fingertips was the good old fashioned telephone.

According to the sexton I spoke with at Mount Hope Cemetery, there was a John Brown buried there on July 24, 1897—a date roughly lining up with the death dates I had already discovered. As a confirmation, his age was given as twenty six—the same as that provided by the county’s death index.

A puzzling addition was the fact that this John Brown was buried in a plot alongside someone named David Bentley. No cause for alarm there, though; owner for both plots was listed as Emma Brown.

Of course, now, as I mentioned, John Brown’s entry may be found through several online resources. First discovery is via Find A Grave, as you may have presumed. What you may not know about Cass County resources, though, is that owing to a well-conceived collaborative effort, cemetery records may be found both at the Cass County, Indiana GenWeb project and the City of Logansport’s cemetery inquiry page. In fact, scrolling down the GenWeb page for the “B” entries, you may see for yourself just how many entries there were for Brown burials—including five John Browns and one John Browne. An added encouraging observation is that the city’s database includes details for each individual’s burial record under the heading, “Genealogy Information.”

No matter how well-coordinated the current local online burial records may be, I’m still left wondering about those two differing dates of death in 1897 for John Brown. My next step needs to be a thorough search through a database of historic newspapers for the Logansport area, where hopefully an obituary will shed some light on the correct details.

Thankful for Baptismal Records

When faced with researching a name as common as John Brown, online indices seem to be a God-send, especially when they zero in on exactly the right man. After all, there are a lot of John Browns out there.

But when the records we’re seeking don’t happen to be available online, there goes the handy search engine, too.

When it came to seeking birth records for John Brown’s son Frederick, I found the tried and true route used by genealogists for decades—those old microfilm records—to be the answer to my quest.

Fortunately—and this isn’t always the case—the baptismal records for the Catholic Church in Cass County, Indiana, were indeed available on microfilm. If you remember, John and Emma Carle Brown were residents of Logansport, and we had already located their marriage license there.

Scrolling through microfilm #1578977 at my local Family History Center was the same as checking records in any microfilm: slow-going, tedious work. If you’ve ever found yourself taking that route, you know what I mean. You can be sure I carefully recorded “Part Six” of the location where I found Frederick’s baptismal information in the documents from Saint Joseph Catholic Church and all the details of that document as I transcribed them here:

baptised February 20, 1898: Fred William Brown, born January 29, 1898, parents John Brown and Emma Carl, witnesses Wm. Bri... and Maud Carl, by Rev. Kohne.

Of course, with the certificate darkened by age and the handwriting not consistently clear, I missed a key element of one “witness” name—that of William Bri…—but I captured as much of the record as I could.

In addition to an exact date of birth obtained from this document, I did glean several helpful bits of data. First, I confirmed the mother’s maiden name—albeit, admittedly, without the “e” for Carle—and the possibility that it was Emma’s sister who was also named in the document. I also noticed that, despite being listed as Frederick in the 1900 census, Emma’s son was actually baptized simply as Fred. Then, too, I had his middle name to add to the record. While I can’t quite decipher that “witness” William B’s name, it is possible that it might also have been Brown, thus providing a hint for a possible brother’s name for John.

Just as copies of source documents—such as this microfilm of the baptismal records for Saint Joseph’s Church—help locate information as yet unavailable in online resources, historic newspapers provide a lens with which to zoom in on the details of the ancestors we are researching.

Keeping in mind that, within two years of young Fred’s birth, he lost his father, my next hope was to see if I could find any hints for what became of the man he never quite got to call “Dad.” For this step, my goal was to find two resources: death certificate information, and any narrative in the small town newspapers being published at that time in tiny Logansport.

If, that is, any of those newspapers were available in online resources.