Double, Triple, Quadruple

 

Double-checking facts found for a brick wall ancestor? Maybe make that a triple-check. Or possibly a quadruple-check. Just in case someone gave a wrong report.

In the case of the Boothe men in Nansemond County, the fact that three of them were said to have been sons of Henry—no, whoops, make that Abram or Abraham—gave me cause for concern. Either it was one father or the other. Can't have both results for the same sons. So, given my predicament in trying to figure out where my brick wall second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe might have fit in, I decided to look for more confirmation.

Despite a genealogy book featured on Ancestry.com stating that Robert, Kinchen, Nathaniel, and Andrew were sons of Henry Boothe, I had already found one tiny detail reporting otherwise. That report was one single answer on the death record for Andrew Boothe, who died in Nansemond County in 1860. According to his brother, Andrew's parents were actually Abram and "Cherry" Booth.

So I went looking. I needed to double check that report. Could I find another Boothe sibling whose death record confirmed those same parental names?

Well, I found something, alright, but it added another tailspin to my journey. Found in the same death register for Nansemond County was the entry for a sister (see line number thirty two) who—at least according to the reporting party, her son Edwin Duke—also claimed Abram Boothe as her father (although naming her mother as Charlotte, not Charity or Cherry). Only problem was: the woman's given name contained a questionable first letter. What was her actual name? 

Since her son Edwin Duke was identified as the reporting party, and the death occurred in 1853, it was a simple matter of finding the family in the 1850 census. There, the woman's name was given, in a clear hand, as sixty five year old Pennina Duke, assumed wife of Jacob. Checking further, a similar name was mentioned in a collection of North American family history books assembled at Ancestry.com—but also accessible through Internet Archive under the specific 1909 title, A Genealogy of the Duke-Shepherd-Van Metre Family. That time, her name was rendered as Penniniah Booth—and thankfully, her fifth child was indeed named Edwin. (Her first-born, incidentally, was given the name Abraham, if that Genealogy was correct.)

No matter whether that woman's name was Penniniah or Pennina, that's a far cry from the report claiming Henry Boothe named his daughter Lottie. Perhaps, indeed, he did—but he apparently was not the father of this Booth woman, nor her brothers Nathaniel, Robert, and Andrew. Granted, some grandchildren may not have been as familiar with their grandparents' names as we might like, but I have a nagging suspicion that Henry Boothe was not the man we thought he was.

Having examined documents for each of the supposed sons of Henry—now, presumably, actually Abram—we'll take a final look at what we've found in this exploration, come the last day of this month. In the meantime, we have another puzzle to unravel from its family-myth moorings: the claim that my second great-grandfather's dad was actually a man named Daniel Boothe. Time to begin quadruple-checking all over again.

When Death Records Get it Wrong

 

While it may seem that the holy grail for genealogists is the documentation verifying our ancestors' life details, I've had my own complaints about the use of one particular type of documentation: death records. While they may get it right when we look for verification of date and even time of a relative's death, the other details on a modern death certificate can range from reliable to ridiculous.

Take my prime bugaboo with death certificates: mother's maiden name. To illustrate what I mean, we need only to take a step back and view the scenario at the moment of that unpleasant interview between official record keeper and designated spokesperson for the bereaved family. Think about it: the family has just received the worst possible news about a loved one, and is currently experiencing predictable waves of grief and, sometimes, incredulity. Then some stranger pops on the scene, abruptly demanding information on the identity of the deceased.

I can't tell you how many times I've realized that the respondent to such interviews, in the midst of personal grief, reverts from answering questions about the relative, and instead begins answering for one's self. Take the question, "Mother's maiden name?" That question follows in a logical progression from name, details about residence, maybe even about usual occupation, to date and place of birth. All well and good—until we hit that sticking point of the mother's maiden name. I'm not sure why I've seen so many informants blurt out as answer to that question their own mother's maiden name, but there it is, plain as can be, on the deceased's completed death certificate.

Chalk it up to nerves, I guess. Family members have gone through a lot by the time a loved one has passed—whether that death was an unexpected surprise, or the end of a very long and difficult illness. So when I find an old death record in Nansemond County, Virginia, for the suspected relatives of my second great-grandfather, Alexander Boothe, I can't be sure the report about the man's parents is actually correct.

The reporting party at Andrew Boothe's death in 1860 was his older brother Nathaniel. A savvy businessman known for his successes, Nathaniel was not likely to flub this mention of his brother's parents' names. After all, he shared those same parents; this was life-long knowledge. According to Nathaniel Boothe, their parents were named Abram and Cherry Booth—at least, that's what the official record keeper noted.

When we go exploring on genealogical websites, though, we can find records indicating otherwise. Take, for example, this find from a book originally published by Clearfield Company in 1963, volume seven of Historical Southern Families. There, on page 109, we discover:

Family tradition states that Henry Boothe m Elizabeth Rabey, dau of Kedar Rabey of Nansemond County, and they were the parents of Robert, Kinchen, Nathaniel, William, Andrew and Lottie Boothe, who were b between 1779 and 1805. This tradition also states that William Boothe, son of Henry, owned a tavern in Gatesville, N C,  and that Lottie (Charlotte) Boothe m James Rabey.

Well, doesn't that put together a splendid package?! A genealogical report even outlined the connections a bit further. But what happened to Nathaniel's own report that his brother's parents (and thus his own) were Abram and Cherry? Must we assume that, grief-stricken, he reported the wrong names on his brother's death record?

Almost as an afterthought, the article continues with this curious addendum about Nathaniel and another brother, Robert. The two had apparently purchased 

land in Nansemond which had belonged to an Abraham Boothe, near the original Boothe grants. Abraham Boothe was dead by 1812, when his estate was carried on the tax lists. He left a widow, Charity (Cherry) Boothe, who d in 1825, when Nathaniel, Kinchen, Robert and Charlotte bought items at the sale of her property.

Ironically, that passage in the book concluded, "Abraham Boothe's relationship to this family is not known."

Surveying the Document Landscape

 

Today is the start of RootsTech, so you can hardly expect me to focus on my own research when there are so many presentations to watch online. However, I did take some time to explore what documents could be found on this month's research predicament: finding the roots of my second great-grandfather Alexander Boothe.

Yesterday, we had explored the direct route of looking for all documents concerning Alexander, himself. Then, stretching our search one more step, we examined the father named in the death certificates of each of Alexander's children. Seeing the consistency gives me more confidence to discard the insertion of a first name of William, as some researchers had asserted.

There is, however, another inconsistency I've noticed in this saga of the migrating Boothe family. Supposedly, Alexander left his home in Nansemond County, Virginia, with his two sons after the death of their mother, arriving in Tennessee in time for the 1850 census. If that was the case, one would suppose the boys' father would report their place of birth as Virginia for that 1850 census—but that was not the case. Take a look for yourself at that record and notice that, while Alexander reported himself as having been born in Virginia, twelve year old Quinton and five year old David were marked as having been born in Tennessee, not Virginia.

Surely that must be a one-off error, you might be thinking. I did, too. So my next step was to look at all the other census records in which I could find either of those earlier two sons from the first marriage.

Searching for Quinton did not produce any helpful information. I have yet to find him in the 1860 census, though I did notice that someone by that same name enlisted in the Confederate Army in Texas in the early 1860s. Checking Quinton's children's death certificates for father's place of birth was not helpful, either. I found his son John's death certificate reported Quinton as having been born in Tennessee—but then daughter Sallie's death certificate showed Texas for her father's birthplace, and son William's informant gave his father's place of birth as Georgia.

It would have helped if Quinton had died just a little bit later than he did. Having breathed his last on January 6, 1908, that date fell at the beginning of the very year in which Texas instituted statewide registration of deaths. Unfortunately, Quinton's does not appear to be among those earliest of such a statewide format, else I'd be snatching it up to view not only the detail on his father's place of birth, but the name of his own mother.

Quinton's younger brother David Booth did not boost my confidence in that story about a Virginia birth for the boys. I was able to find David in each enumeration from the first census after his birth to the last census still existing before his 1899 death. Just as his brother had done, David eventually moved his family to Texas, so a death in 1899 meant his passing predated the modernized form of reporting which includes name and place of birth of each parent. Bottom line for David: every one of those enumerations listed his place of birth as Tennessee, not Virginia.

If those reports of place of birth in Tennessee were correct, that sticking point gives me reason to pause when considering the family story about Alexander Booth losing his wife in Virginia. Perhaps yet again that is a reason why this man has played the part of a brick wall ancestor. Maybe his story is far different than what some of us Boothe cousins had assumed.

Make a List, Check it Twice

 

Having made a list of all the records where I found mention of my second great-grandfather, it's time to check it again. Whether the man was named Alexander Booth or William Alexander Boothe (as one researcher had electronically published far and wide), I still can't say. But it's time to go back through all the records in which he appeared, and check them twice for the precise detail on his name.

This can be tedious work—the kind that, towards the end, may have us kicking ourselves for not being as thorough the first time around. (I'm not to that stage yet, though this ancestor has been a brick wall stopping research progress for far longer than I'd like.)

We've already reviewed Mr. Booth's cameo appearance in each of the census records from 1840 until his supposed death in 1895 and, excepting the missing 1890 census, the name always showed as Alexander Booth—no William in sight.

The next task was to go back and check the death record for each of his children to see what their bereaved relatives reported about the decedent's father's name. This was no small task, considering our man had at least two children with his first—and unknown—wife, plus eleven (at least) children with his second wife Rachel T. Riley.

Had I been able to track down an actual death certificate for either of those first two sons, I would have been rewarded not only with information on Alexander's true identity, but also with the name of their long-gone mother. No such luck, though, for eldest son Quinton died in Texas at the beginning of the year of 1908, perhaps before the more modern format for death certificates was instituted in that state. Quinton's younger brother David likely died before that point, possibly in 1899, though I have yet to complete my search for his death record.

However, moving on to Rachel Riley's Booth children, there were many opportunities to receive the same answer. Beginning with the eldest child, their daughter Laura Caroline, all the way to the youngest of the Booth children I could find—daughter Charlotte Rachel—the entry for the deceased's father was basically the same. It was either Alexander Booth or Alex Booth. Sometimes the surname was spelled with the flourish of a final "e"—Boothe—but other than that, no surprises.

In that trek through the Booth children's own death records, the farthest the standard answer varied was for son Leroy Burton Booth's death certificate, for whom his brother James was the informant, in which the father was listed as "Alec Booth."

There were, however, a couple hiccups in that thorough search. In one case, for daughter Mary, who died in Virginia in 1948, the informant was her son-in-law, Charles Smith, who reported that Mary's father was named John Booth and that he was born in Scotland. In another instance, for son Charles, the section on parents' names and places of birth was left entirely blank—as was the entry space designated for the name and address of the informant. Looking more closely, though, I spotted the cause of death—"railroad accidents causing scalds of almost entire body"—which might be considered a justifiable omission.

Overwhelmingly, the evidence pointed to the man's name not being William. For now, I'll proceed by forsaking that other name and stick with Alexander Booth.

This process of checking every detail, every document, once again has fingered one detail: if there was anything else we could find about those first two sons, the children of Alexander's first wife, perhaps that would lead to some solid guidance back to Virginia—and to some collateral Booth lines.

A Dilemma . . .

 

Now that I'm deep in the midst of deciphering handwritten documents in Polish, German, and even Latin in search of my second great-grandparents' collateral lines, a thought occurred to me. It was a thought I didn't appreciate thinking at the time, but it does serve as a reminder when considering the possibility of errors in records as I face my current research dilemma.

I had been following one collateral line, going through birth, marriage, and—eventually—death records, when I spotted a name I knew couldn't be right. It was in the death record for a child of my second great-grandparent's sibling, where the mother's name was provided. The mother's given name was correct (remember, I had already found this family's details in other documents) but the maiden name written on the document could not have the right one—not if this were the same family I had been researching all along. In fact, it was a surname associated by marriage to totally different branch of the family.

Did the reporting party, under the stress of losing a loved one, suddenly blurt out the wrong maiden name? I've certainly seen this happen in death certificates written up in English in my own country, but this time I was deciphering records from old Prussia—in a foreign language, no less. Can I assume that oft-spotted error in my own country's English-language documents could have revealed a bit of universal human nature? Perhaps death records in other languages contain the same—totally understandable—error, too. My dilemma, though, is how to determine when such an error would be likely, even when stumbling through a foreign language in another country's death records.

In a Quandary

 

When it comes to researching those hard-to-find Kelly ancestors from Ireland, I'm in a quandary. I know when they arrived in Indiana—give or take a few years—and I know they sailed from Ireland, but for the way they got here or where, exactly, they were born, I can't find any trace of information. I was hopeful, in discovering one Kelly sibling's husband's obituary mentioning a route through New Orleans, that other records might bear out that statement—but nothing materialized.

What to do next? I've been wracking my brain for alternate resources to use. It occurred to me that, if in-law Michael Creahan's obituary was so chatty about his life story, perhaps the same might hold true for some of his Kelly brothers-in-law. But there was one catch to that idea: newspapers in Lafayette, Indiana, for that time period are not consistently available.

Since I hold subscriptions to three historic newspaper resources—Newspapers.com, NewspaperArchive.com, and GenealogyBank—you'd think it would be easy to find those Kelly obituaries in one of the three. Think again. Each company's collection may include one or more newspapers for a specific city, but the date range may contain gaps. Or the particular newspaper company that a family might have favored may not have been in the given collection at all. Hence, my original reason for having more than one archival subscription.

There are free resources, as well, of course, especially thanks to Google, which has an extensive collection of digitized newspapers freely accessible online. However, reviewing the available titles, listed by name alphabetically, didn't reveal any possibilities for my Kelly search.

Yet, the very fact that a Find A Grave volunteer was able to find and post a copy of the 1895 obituary for Matthew Kelley shows me that the Lafayette newspapers have been preserved somewhere—but where? Of course there is the U.S. Library of Congress' Chronicling America, but though it is searchable by state as well as by name, asking for Kelley in 1895 produced over two hundred hits; there is no way to narrow the search by city.

I was aware that the Indiana State Library has holdings of their state's newspapers, including their Hoosier State Chronicles. There, I could search by date, which I tried for Matthew Kelley's obituary, but the function, which lists all the Indiana newspapers available in their collection for any given day, indicated nothing in their holdings for Lafayette for the dates following Matthew's August 17, 1895, death.

Remembering my Twelve Most Wanted project earlier this summer, searching for Hugh Stevens' naturalization record, I wondered whether the source of that answer, the Tippecanoe County Historical Association, could help with my obituary request. Sure enough, their website provides a listing of their newspaper holdings—but even there, the collection is spotty. At least the year of 1895 seems to include a full year of editions for one Lafayette newspaper, so that may be my next step, since both Matthew and his brother Thomas died in that year.

Bit by bit, I'll assemble the set of obituaries for the Kelly siblings, in hopes that someone else was just as chatty about family history as the informant for Michael Creahan's obituary in 1915. Whether those family stories are correct may be another matter, but I can't know unless I first get started with that thorough search.

Those French Records: They're all Greek to Me

 

I'd love to say it's all Greek to me, but unfortunately I can't; it's French, and the last time I studied that language...well, let's just say it's beyond my memory currently. But to gain any helpful details on a family member's roots, I'll try anything.

In this case, the possible family connection is to Theresa Blaising Stevens, technically my father-in-law's step-grandmother, but in reality, the only grandmother he ever knew. Theresa came to the United States as a young child—possibly a toddler or even an infant—sometime before she and her family showed up in Indiana for the 1870 census.

Her family, by the time of that 1870 census, was missing one person: Theresa's father, whoever he was. We've seen Theresa's mother Mary's obituary, which mentioned his name as Lawrence Blaising, but we've found two of her brothers' death certificates state their father's name as Henry. This past weekend, it was time for me to see what could be found on the man who supposedly died during wartime, back in France in the 1860s, no matter which given name he claimed.

Ancestry.com made the search rather easy, if the death record featured through their hints system is the right one. Logically—at least for someone whose death was in France—Theresa's father was listed as Laurent, rather than the Americanized Lawrence. That was a discrepancy easily accepted. But for the next detail translated from that block of French handwriting, I had my doubts. Either my French was far more rusty than I thought it was, or we have a problem with this death record.

I tried my hand at transcribing the words into Google Translate, just in case. Of course, what appears to me to be illegible text might, to a native speaker, be easily deciphered. Here is my best rendition of the basic details:

In the year 1882, January 4th at [?] hours in the morning, the death certificate of Laurent Blaising, aged 61, bus driver, born at Romelfing (Meurthe). Died yesterday at 1:00, [at his home at? or] Lived at 47 Chapelle Street. Son of Jean Blaising and Anne Marie Meiller, spouses [or couple?] deceased; married to Marie Hirschbeck aged 52, day laborer....

Whether I've managed to mangle the body of the text or not, there is one thing clear about this portion of the record's information: Mary Blaising did not leave France after this man died; she left long before his 1882 death.

Now, this Laurent Blaising may not be the right husband, notwithstanding the name of that man's wife matching up with what our Mary's name might have been in France ("Marie"). And of course there might be more than one Laurent Blaising with a wife named Marie in the whole of France—or even in their native region of Lorraine.

One thing, however, is certain: this puzzle will require further inspection.

What the Records Say —If we Can Find Them

 

One way to confirm a relative's parents' names might be to view the subsequent death records of that relative's siblings. In our search to confirm the parents of Theresa Blaising Stevens, my father-in-law's grandmother, that is what we will attempt to do today—if we can find such records.

According to Theresa's mother's 1907 obituary, six brothers remained to her after their mother's passing. Fortunately, each of those named brothers was also identified by his current place of residence. Of course, I would have further appreciated any mention of each sibling's spouse's name as well, but I'll take what I can get.

For the first child mentioned in Mary Ann Blaising's obituary, Henry, his own death certificate didn't offer much help. Though Henry lived in the same town as his mother at the point of her death, by the time of his own passing in 1931, he was living in Texas. Those left to mourn the eighty two year old immigrant, however, were hard pressed to provide information for Henry's death certificate. For his father's name, a scrawling handwriting entered what looked like an abbreviation: "Hy." Henry? And for mother's maiden name, not even a guess, though she apparently outlived her husband by years. However, the informant, Henry's daughter Rose, did know that he had been born in Lorraine, France.

Well, what about the second of Theresa's siblings? August apparently remained in New Haven long after his mother's passing there. But when we look for his own records, we spot one detail which may cause us some research problems: he was listed as J. August Blaising. Could he have been born a Jean August? No matter, we can see from that certificate, thankfully entered in a very clear handwriting, that his father's name was given as Henry Blaising. August's mother, according to his death certificate, was listed as Mary Hershbeck.

The only problem with seeing the two brothers' father listed as Henry Blaising was that Mary's own obituary gave her husband's name as Lawrence. Since the third child mentioned in Mary's obituary was also named Lawrence, I looked to his residence in Albany, New York, for any clarification, but so far have found nothing—making that task a work still in progress.

On I went through each of the sons listed in Mary's obituary. With some, I encountered problems. For son Louis, his typewritten certificate simply provided a given name for his father, something that looked like Lauren, but for the mother, "unknown." But a record of Louis' application for a marriage license made up for that lack, providing the name of his father as Lawrence Blaising. And for his mother, an interesting twist: her name was given as Mary Hershbach.

Once again I spotted variations on the sons' own names. Like his brother August, Philip was buried with a telltale leading initial "J"—Jean Phillipe?

All that leads me to wonder: if that family were indeed from France, could it be possible that not only the given names like "Louis"—spelled "Lewis" in his marriage record—were Americanized, but could the same have happened to the very surname they were all known by? What if we approached a more phonetic rendition of the possible original surname? Could it actually have been something more like Blesin? Or if truly German, as some census records had indicated, could the name have originally looked like Blaessing or Bläsing?

At some point, we'll need to take a deep breath and attempt that flying leap across the void to the continent where the family originated. We'll let the romanticized version of the family's story from Mary's obituary help guide us, but we need to be open to other possibilities as we consider the documentation.

Theresa's Six Surviving Siblings

 

One way to confirm those doubtful listings of parents' names in a death certificate might be to compare what was given in a sibling's own record. Thankfully in our case, while seeking confirmation of Theresa Blaising Stevens' parents' names, we have at least six opportunities to do so: her six siblings still remaining after their mother's 1907 passing.

According to the Fort Wayne, Indiana, obituary for Mary Blaising, she originally came to the United States from France with ten of her children. By the time of her passing, seven of those descendants remained, including Theresa herself. They were Theresa's brothers Henry, August, Lawrence, John, Philip, and Louis. Granted, those were their Americanized names, but that list provides us a starting point for launching our search for other confirmations of the Blaising children's parents' names.

Unfortunately, while this sounds like a straightforward proposition, in reality these research quests are not so easily accomplished. For one thing, if you know anything about French given names, you may realize that there may be more coming into play here than a mere Americanization of their names. The possibility of two given names for one son—such as Jean Phillipe instead of simply Philip, for instance—might make one son appear as if there were actually two, depending on how inconsistently those two names were used.

Looking back to the 1870 census, where we first found Theresa and her family in New Haven, Indiana, we can see there were seven children listed. Whether the names were not totally identical to those in Mary's obituary may be a case of editorial error on the part of the newspaper where Mary's obituary had been published—or perhaps a case of census enumerator error in the 1870 census. Whatever the case might be, that 1870 census provides a sister for Theresa rather than all brothers. And there was no sign of a son named Lawrence, despite that child most likely being a namesake for his father, who was by then presumed dead back in France, or at least not likely to have fathered another son after 1870.

No matter; now that we have at least a partially confirmed list of Theresa's siblings, our next task will be to trace the location of each sibling to find records of each sibling's family across the decades, and particularly to locate their own death certificates. Let's see whether the names of Mary Blaising's parents still turn out to be Henry "Herochbeck" and Mary Ann Becker.

That One Certain Thing

 

Benjamin Franklin's pithy remark that "in this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes" has come to mind lately. Sometimes, we make a family history search such a struggle that perhaps we omit the one certain thing that could provide the answer we seek. After all, despite my quandary about the identity of one Clinton Metzger—one and the same as Cornelius, or a different sibling?—there was one sure thing I could do to determine Clinton's connection to my mother-in-law's Metzger family. Son of Joseph Metzger or not, I could check for his death certificate.

Of course, going solely by the information provided on the Metzger family from census records, the name Clinton never appeared as a son of Joseph and Rachel Walker Metzger. It was only working from the other direction—from DNA matches backwards in time to their parents, then grandparents and beyond—that I encountered the assertion that there was a son named Clinton Metzger.

Clinton, whoever he might have been, was said to have died in 1933. I may have my doubts about the dual entities claiming that 1860 approximate date of birth, but I know where to find instant gratification on my desire to locate his death record: his entry on FamilySearch.org.

Sure enough, just like his Find A Grave entry indicated, Clinton Metzger had died on September 15, 1933, in Delaware County, Ohio. It was so easy to find, I wondered why it didn't occur to me to reach for it sooner. The clincher: his parents were listed as Joseph Metzger and Rachel Walker, just as those DNA cousins had already predicted. Never mind that the closest of those Clinton-descended DNA matches only share twenty one centiMorgans or less with my husband, the document settles that question. He's from the same Metzger family as my mother-in-law.

I may never be able to determine what became of Cornelius Metzger. It could be that this was merely a case of a careless census enumerator—though yes, I know, Cornelius would have been a more fitting name than Clinton for the child of a devout Catholic. And don't forget that, even in the early 1900s, his mother named him in her will—and was strangely silent about any child named Clinton—so not only was there such a person as Cornelius, but he was not one of those unfortunate children who die young and leave barely a trace. Despite whatever may have happened to the disappearing Cornelius, I can still proceed with more confidence in adding Clinton to the family tree—and thus, all his descendants so I can link those three more DNA matches to my mother-in-law's tree.

For now, we'll set aside that question about Cornelius for another year. There are more Metzger siblings to explore before this month's research project is completed.

Going—Surprise!—Straight to the Source

 

Searching for any information on Uncle John's immigrant father-in-law was difficult. Not only was the man's surname incredibly easy to mis-spell, but he seemed to switch between two very different given names, as well. In all the birth records I've been able to find for his children, he was identified as Anton or Antoni Aktabowski. But for the few official census records in which I've been able to spot him, he went by the name Felix Aktabowski.

Confusing the issue—and any hope of finding him in his homeland before immigration—was the fact that some of those records stated he was from Poland, and others from Russia. In fact, while the 1900 census stated his country of origin was Poland, tagged along with that answer was the abbreviation "Russ," possibly indicating that was the actual language he spoke. 

Missing from the records I've been able to access, either on Ancestry.com or at FamilySearch.org, was the actual copy of Felix Aktabowski's death certificate. Ancestry provided a transcription which gave his date of death as December 6, 1905, and the place as the old Kings County, New York, former name of the New York City borough now known as Brooklyn.

Of course, transcriptions never provide all the information on a document—and usually the missing part is the very detail we want to know about more specifically. Keep in mind, I had already located one province in Poland which had several Aktabowski families listed in baptismal and marriage record transcriptions at the Polish genealogy website Geneteka—but without confirmation of Felix's parents' names, that discovery is meaningless. I needed to find a way to see the actual death record—the whole record.

When I find transcriptions at Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org, I like to look at the notes for the record set to glean information on the source upon which the transcriptions were based. Going back to the notes for the Ancestry source—the New York, New York, U.S., Extracted Death Index 1862-1948—and scrolling down the page to "Source Information," I could see the original data was provided directly from the New York City Department of Records.

Even better, scrolling farther down the page to the "About" section, I spotted this note on obtaining records:

Visit the Department of Records/Municipal Archives website, www.nyc.gov/records (click on family history research) for information and instructions on how to view and/or obtain copies of death records identified in the index....

Notice those instructions included the phrase, "how to view." Yes, view—as in, possibly, actually, you know, see the document for myself. Right now. No stamped, self-addressed envelope. No waiting six weeks. And best of all: no tap dance to send some type of special check because the twenty-first century convenience of using a credit card would be future shock to government officials.

For those of you who have kept up with the victories on behalf of genealogists by the nonprofit organization, Reclaim the Records, you already know that New York City was one of their first projects. (For those who relish reading the blow-by-blow of this judicial victory, see here for the recounting.) The outcome of that effort was the release of city records up through the mid-1900s.

Including Felix Aktabowski's death certificate.

Though I had known about the victory gained by Reclaim the Records on behalf of all of us researching our roots in New York City, what I didn't realize was that, strangely prompted by the court experience, the New York City Department of Records and Information Services decided to set up their own website to share the wealth. It was there, on their own website set up for this purpose, that I was able to search for Felix's death certificate.

Though parents' names given on such documents are only as reliable as the memory of the bereaved reporting party suddenly tasked with recalling such information, I'll take the answers as a clue to guide me in further research. With that, I'm off to discover what I can find, back in Poland, for a couple by the name of John Aktabowski and Agnes Derkowski.

Knowing Now What Was Needed Then

 

Sometimes, I wish I had thought of things sooner—like when I had first sent away for my paternal grandfather's death certificate. If I knew at that time what I know now, I could have had Aunt Rose's death record on hand to help answer the questions I'm struggling with this month.

But that was then; this is now, when I finally discovered the actual date of Rose Hassinger's death. For that detail, my thanks go to that bulldog nonprofit, Reclaim the Records, for their wrestling match with the New York State Department of Health. As they put it, "It took us seventeen months of fighting with the government just to get a list of the names of dead people."

It was that death index, recently obtained for all by Reclaim the Records, which provided me with the exact date of death of Rose Hassinger. More than that, it also identified the location of her death: "N. Hempstead"—or, more specifically, the Town of North Hempstead, where Julius Hassinger still lived at the time of the 1940 census, three years after his wife's death.

If I had known about that date of Rose's death decades ago, when I first sent for my grandfather's own death certificate, I might have actually obtained a copy of it. As it stands now, my chances of actually obtaining a copy of Rose's death record—and thus, the names of her parents if that was provided at the time of her death—are virtually nil. And there's a spiraling descent of a story to explain why my chances are so limited.

Here's my tale of woe, set to the tune of apparent legal changes in New York State. According to their website, I now can only order a copy of a death certificate if I am the spouse, parent, child, or sibling of the deceased. Problem #1: Rose Hassinger was none of these; she was my grandaunt. Worse, she had no children, and her only brother has long since died, so I have no one to ask to order the record on my behalf.

Just when my hopes were dashed by this restriction, a ray of hope appeared on the horizon: the New York State Department of Health will provide an uncertified copy of a death record, as long as the date of death was "on file" for at least fifty years. The good news is Rose's date of death in 1937 certainly qualifies me on that count. The bad news? "Processing a genealogy request may take eight (8) months or longer."

Instead, the New York State website recommendation for the impatient: submit requests to the municipal clerk where the death actually occurred. Next step: look for the county, right? Wrong. In New York, death records were generally kept by the township. In Rose's case, that would be the Town of North Hempstead.

Clicking through their menu to, first, the Town Clerk's office, then being redirected to their webpage on Vital Records—nothing is ever easy—I discovered a listing again of the same limitations provided by the state's website. In addition, the site rattled off a list of places of death, mostly hospitals, for which they would not provide death certificates. Problem #2: from that caveat, I now enter my own personal Catch 22. How am I to know where Rose might have died? Without an obituary, the only way I could know her precise location of death within the township would be to view it on her death certificate.

The faint glimmer at the end of this tunnel of genealogical doom was the township's provision of a "fee for genealogical searches." Of course, I don't need a search; thanks to Reclaim the Records, I finally have the precise date of death. Nothing on the webpage indicates that the fee would result in receiving a copy of the actual document desired. But the entry offered a phone number to call "for further information."

After all that wandering in circles, I decided to double check what I had found. I looked up the FamilySearch.org wiki for researching genealogy in Nassau County, New York, location of Rose's final home in North Hempstead. There, the section on Vital Records mentioned that records in New York, contrary to the sense I had gathered from all that reading, could actually be ordered online.

Genealogy could come with instant gratification, after all? I clicked on the link in the FamilySearch wiki article, which brought me to an order form for Archives.com. I hesitated. This seemed a bit too easy, after all the warnings I had consumed from the New York State website. Another clickable link in that same paragraph on the wiki offered an alternate: a New York State Records Research Guide at the website Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness. There, too, the option of ordering online led to the Archives.com order form.

Receiving my answer within "two to five days" seems tempting, until I realize it comes at a price—a price I would likely not have had to pay, if only I had known all those years ago to order Aunt Rose's document along with the death record for my own grandfather. Were things easier back then? Perhaps I am just conveniently forgetting.

Doubling Up

 

Running into possible double identities when researching an ancestor can be frustrating, as I mentioned just this past weekend. Today, I'm doubly at it with the same problem, only this time, I'm focusing on another branch of the family: my paternal grandfather's sister Rose.

Aunt Rose had supposedly been married three times. I've located records identifying her first married name—the unhelpful surname Miller—and her second marriage in 1915 to George W. Kober. George's 1932 death left Rose a widow, but not for long. According to newspaper reports, the widowed Rose Kober married a man by the name of Julius Hassinger.

My only problem: every time I tried searching for a New York City resident by that man's name, I kept finding a married man whose wife was named Helen. That's a problem. Whatever became of the new Rose Hassinger?

Not being able to locate a death record or even a burial for anyone by Rose's most recent married name, I thought I'd try a different tack: research this other Julius Hassinger to see where the information led. After all, many subsequent marriages turned out not quite the way the parties had hoped, and divorce could have been the result. If that was followed by yet another marriage for Rose, she could be lost to any researcher not aware of any new married name.

Since the original newspaper announcement of the wedding of Julius and Rose mentioned two scant details about the groom—that he had been a confirmed bachelor up to the point of their 1933 nuptials, and that he worked for the Post Office—there wasn't much upon which to base a search. Worse, since the couple lived in the greater New York City region, the chances of there being more than one man by the name of Julius Hassinger were high. After all, New York City in 1930 had a population pushing toward seven million people, providing numbers almost certain to produce name doubles.

When I looked for Julius in the 1930 census, I found information on one man with that name. The details provided in that census seemed to support what little had been mentioned about him in the announcement of his 1933 wedding. Renting a room in the household of Andrew and Sophie Siebert at 141 Whitehall Boulevard in Garden City—just outside the New York City limits—Julius, like his landlord Andrew, was reported to be a clerk in the Post Office. His reported age of forty seven at the time would have made him somewhat younger than his future bride, but I'm not yet sure of Rose's own age, only going by what the newspaper report had divulged.

Julius had reported his place of birth as New York, and his parents' origin to be Germany. The most important detail—at least, for our purposes here—was that he claimed to be a single man.

Looking further for confirmation of this Julius Hassinger—whether he was our man or not—I searched for records predating that census. A World War I draft registration card produced a birth date for one New York City man named Julius: March 3, 1883. At the time he signed the form, Julius was living in downtown Manhattan, working as a postal clerk at "Penn Terminal Station"—or Penn Station, as it is called today.

At the time, Julius gave a contact person named Ernest Hassinger, whom he identified as his brother, and who was living at the same address as Julius. However, looking for a Hassinger household in the earlier 1910 census did not produce those two names paired together. Instead, I found Julius living alone with his widowed father John. Again, Julius was listed as a clerk in the Post Office. But this time, the entry showed that Julius' father had arrived in the United States in 1872, shortly before the then-twenty seven year old Julius would have been born.

If we turned the search in the opposite direction, time wise, there would be no sign of Julius' supposed wife, Rose. Despite their marriage in 1933, by the time of the 1940 census, Julius—with an estimated birth year of 1883, agreeing with the data from the earlier enumerations—was sporting a considerably younger wife by the name of Helen. 

Yet, looking more closely at that actual document, there are a few loose threads which invite us to tug at them and see if we can unravel this illusion of double identities. The first detail was the fact that the 1940 census asked where residents lived five years prior to that date. Unfortunately, the entry for Julius was overwritten, making it hard to decipher the true answer. Transcribers at Ancestry.com took his answer to read, "New Haven." I think the answer might have been something different: Woodhaven.

You might recall that, when Rose had been married to her second husband, George Kober, her address had been a home in part of Queens borough called Woodhaven. When Rose remarried, could the Hassinger couple simply have retained the old Kober residence as their own? More telling was the five-year-prior answer for Julius' 1940s wife Helen: she stated her home, five years before that, was not in Woodhaven, but in Manhattan.

Bingo: Julius and Helen weren't married to each other, five years before 1940. In fact, that led me to locate information on when Julius and Helen might have wed: 1939.

So, this detail makes me feel more positive that we have the right Julius and not, as I had previously thought, his name twin. Something must have happened to Rose between their 1933 wedding and Julius' subsequent marriage to Helen. Whether it was a divorce or a death, there should be a record. But where was it?

Just to make sure, and to follow Julius' trail to the end, I located his Find a Grave memorial in Florida—a customary destination for many retired New York City residents. Julius died on February 3, 1964, according to his obituary, and was buried in Fort Lauderdale. His only survivor mentioned in the obituary was his wife Helen. No children—and no mention of any previous marriage to someone named Rose.

Since the 1940 census led me to believe that Rose and Julius had established their residence at the former Kober home in Woodhaven—part of Queens within New York City limits—it was puzzling that there was no documentation to help find what became of Rose. Clearly she was out of the picture between 1935 and 1939.

However, I remembered that Julius had previously lived and worked in Garden City, which lies outside the border for New York City. Thinking any records of Rose's demise might instead be listed in Nassau County records, I checked the broader digitized collections for New York State. There, in a 1937 New York State death index, was a mention of one Rose Hassinger, who died on November 14 in North Hempstead, the same town where we had found Julius living in the 1940 census.

I still haven't found an obituary for Rose—if there was any—nor have I located any indication of her burial, other than a volunteer's note on George Kober's Find a Grave memorial that he was "husband of Rose." This will require a call to the cemetery where George was buried to see whether I can find any details on Rose's final resting place. But it at least brings some closure to the pursuit of the mysterious Aunt Rose of the few family photographs passed along to me by older relatives.

True, that only answers the question of what became of Rose. Where she came from is an entirely different question. While I'll review what I already know about this issue tomorrow, there is far more I still need to learn about the part of the family which connects Rose and her brother—my tight-lipped grandfather—to their forebears.

Reading Between the Lines: Old Chicago Death Records

 

It would certainly have been a gift to family history researchers if local jurisdictions had always gathered the same details they now request at the point of a loved one's passing. Mother's maiden name, for instance, is a particular favorite of mine. That—and so many other such gems—unfortunately did not top official lists at the turn of the previous century.

Thus, in pondering the roots of one Johanna Flanagan Lee, receiving a copy of her 1909 Chicago death record was a disappointment. Hers was one of the first such records I had personally sent away for, long before such records became available through online means. Opening up the envelope—yes, it arrived by "snail mail"—just about crushed any sense of anticipation I harbored when I first saw the envelop in my mailbox.

Now that I'm pulling out every scrap of paper from those past iterations of this ongoing search, I'm realizing how helpful reading between the lines might become, even with what seems to be a useless old government document. Mostly, that's because the missing details prompt questions—but those details which were already provided also can lead to questions. 

Here's what I mean. Johanna's death record, below, indicated the amount of time she had spent in the city of Chicago leading up to her final hours. Likewise for the time she had spent in the state of Illinois. For both, the answer was thirty five years. That might signal to us that her destination, when leaving Ireland, was specifically the city of Chicago. 

Keep in mind the term, might. Likewise, take the line indicating her marital status. I was surprised, after seeing no mention of a husband in her obituary, to note that her death record indicated she was married. Where was her husband John? He certainly hadn't been included in the household listing for the 1900 census. I had assumed that was because he had already died; this little detail tells me otherwise.

While the death record provides the name of the cemetery where Johanna was buried, I had already known that and had previously called the cemetery for a listing of everyone buried in that family plot. However, considering that item in her death record now prompts another question: could there have been any specific reasons why someone would be buried in one cemetery rather than any others? Could it be that one undertaker did business with a specific cemetery? Or that one cemetery was primarily used by a specific church parish?

Since Johanna had been Catholic, her final resting place was designated for those of her religion, of course, but could that have led me to the correct parish where her family attended mass? Cross checking with her address would also lead to further information on the church.

These questions only serve to help me dig further into some less significant details, but perhaps that is how they seem, owing to the fact that I already know the answers to these questions. What I don't know, however, is the answers to the same questions, when they are concerning not Johanna but the man also buried in the family plot, by the name of Edward Flanagan. Repeating this sequence of reading between the lines, can I learn anything further about who that mystery Edward Flanagan might have been? 

The main point in walking through this exercise is to remind me that, even when it comes to documents containing very little information, it is possible to springboard that small bit of knowledge into a fuller picture.

Moving from the few known details about Johanna to examining the unknown Edward Flanagan needs to be our next step, not only because he may have been included in that burial location, but also because his was a name included in the baptismal record we saw last week. Edward is very likely related to Johanna. The question is: can we figure out just how?

Taking One Step Backwards

 

Anyone who has researched family history knows that genealogists do things backwards. We start from the here-and-now and move back in time, step by step, through the generations of our ancestors. That means, in my quest to connect my third great-grandmother Rachel Tilson Davis with her rumored Mayflower ancestors, I need to find some documentation first connecting her with her Tilson parents in Washington County, Tennessee.

In that case, taking one step backwards from Rachel means we look for her father, Peleg Tilson, and his wife, Rebeccah. Rebeccah's maiden name I've seen spelled various ways, including Dungins, Dungings, and even Dungans. While Rachel's parents likely died in Washington County, Tennessee—though I have yet to find Peleg's will there—they arrived in Tennessee from their former residence in Washington County, Virginia.

While still searching for Peleg's will in Tennessee, I did see some promising signs in Virginia. Apparently, just as he had in Tennessee, Peleg was party to land transactions in Virginia along with some of his relatives. Take, for instance, this transcription of a land deal in Washington County, Virginia, on October 14, 1794.

The transcription named three parties. Along with Peleg "Tillson" were Levi Bishop and a man identified as "Hellius" Dungans. This I already know is a transcription problem—a difficulty which has frustrated many researchers—for Peleg and his wife Rebeccah later named one of their sons after Rebeccah's father, Hellens Dungans.

Though the 1794 transaction, at least in this transcription, did not indicate the disposal of the 330 acres named in the record, the entry itself is still exciting to me. It pinpoints Peleg and his father-in-law not only in the same place in a specific time frame, but provides me with confirmation of family relationships as well as that Virginia location.

It was barely a decade earlier when that same county's records reported the October 20, 1785, marriage of Peleg and Rebeccah. This notification came to me thanks to an email from fellow blogger Charlie Purvis. Once again, though it is not a typewritten record, the appearance of what looks like the same handwriting style throughout the document seems to represent a copied version of an original record. 

At this point, I have a few options in my attempt to locate records tying Rachel with her father. I can find a copy of Peleg's will, and hope he named his daughter among his heirs. I can also attempt to find church documents including baptismal records, or at least a family Bible. A third approach, barring discovery of the first two items, would be to do a collateral search in which a sibling is clearly linked to the parents and to Rachel.

Locating Peleg's will is an imperative, but could present some pitfalls. For one thing, I have no firm date of death for Peleg. While the Tilson genealogy says nothing about Peleg's death, other published local histories mention the possibility that Peleg returned to the old Tilson family farm in Virginia before his death. Of course, those histories could contain errors. After all, the extended family had not one but three men named Peleg Tilson; any one of them could have been confused for the other in narratives published a century afterwards.

If Rachel and her parents were members of a church with a strong record-keeping conviction—think Catholic here—it would be a simple matter to locate her baptismal record. However, from what little I've gleaned about the Tilson family, they were of a Protestant faith, attending a small country church which, from what records I could find, moved en masse from Virginia through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky—all, that is, except for Peleg Tilson and his two brothers. If the church's records are even existent in any form now, I'd be extremely surprised. Looking for such records would be a last resort—and a doubtful process. Likewise for the search for a Tilson family Bible, unfortunately.

With this, I'll be left to continue my search for Peleg's will while constructing any necessary proof arguments, should I need to move to the collateral research approach. We'll leave this work to be done in the background—possibly revisiting this search in the upcoming year. In the meantime, before the month is out, let's shift gears to the other impromptu research question which popped up, thanks to some emails from DNA matches in Florida on another maternal branch of my family tree. 

The Trouble With Kansas—and Oklahoma, too

 

With six routes to a possible confirmation of a woman's identity, you'd think the answer would be nearly within grasp. But no, thanks to a particular restriction in the state of Oklahoma, I may never find my answer.

I had found a possible answer to my question, "What became of Sarah Murdock Nolan of Lafayette, Indiana?" when I located an 1880 census enumeration in Wichita, Kansas, which included the names and correct locations of birth of the oldest of her children. The only ones missing from that 1880 record were her husband John and two children. Those children we later confirmed had died before the family left Lafayette.

To confirm that those whom we later found in Kansas were actually children of the right Sarah Nolan, the next step seemed easy enough: follow the children through their life's history to obtain their own record of death. If any of those children died after 1900—after 1910 would be preferable—his or her death certificate should include a confirmation of the mother's maiden name. Easy peasy.

Not, apparently, if the child died in either Kansas or Oklahoma.

Yesterday, we explored the possibility that any of Sarah Nolan's children died in Kansas after that magic date heralding the "modern" death certificate. Despite Sarah being mother to at least nine children, that list of possibilities was narrowed down to a weak "maybe" for only one descendant: Samuel. Even at that, I can't determine where Samuel died; I only can see that he possibly was buried in Kansas. Like his mother Sarah, he could have died while visiting family in Oklahoma, then was returned for burial back home in Kansas.

Looking for death records of ancestors in Kansas is not a streamlined matter. Although there is access to some online information on deaths in Sedgwick County where the Nolans once lived—or for anywhere else in the state, for that matter—there are gaps in the series of available dates. Besides, the collection on FamilySearch.org providing such records is considered a "Legacy Collection" and, as it turns out, doesn't include the information I'd be seeking in Sedgwick County.

No matter. That was the chance to trace only one out of six of Sarah's children dying after the early 1900s. Onward to the rest, who all moved to Oklahoma. And that becomes the crux of the problem: Oklahoma, it turns out, is quite particular about who can seek copies of their residents' death records.

While Oklahoma mandated statewide registration of deaths by 1908, that requirement was not consistently achieved before 1930. Worse, as the FamilySearch wiki notes, "Records before 1940 were placed on file inconsistently." So much for the deaths of all but Sabina Nolan Martin, whose passing occurred in 1945.

But there's more. Should I want to obtain any of those Nolan descendants' death records—assuming they did make it into the state file—the state of Oklahoma imposes restrictions. A 2016 state law considers deaths occurring more than fifty years ago "open records." While that may sound encouraging, the law also requires a genealogist to obtain written permission of a descendant of the deceased to order a copy plus document the relationship between the descendant and the deceased.

All for the simple step of confirming what Sarah Nolan's maiden name might have been.

Granted, there are some Oklahoma death records available online. However, like those we discovered for Kansas, the Oklahoma records on FamilySearch.org are considered a Legacy Collection—containing, at best, a partial index of records.

Keeping that now impossibly distant research goal still in sight, I realized there may be another way to achieve my purposes. With our last post on this September research goal tomorrow, we'll take a look at that option as well as determine next steps for resolving this research dilemma.  

 

The Murdock Brothers' Mother

 

It is always helpful to be able to push back a generation in our family history. In the case of Eliza Murdock and her brothers, we can easily do that despite the fact that census records during the family's stay in Indiana did not include any listing of family relationships. There are ample clues that the elderly widow listed in the Murdock household could be mother to Samuel, James, John, and Thomas Murdock.

The problem, however, is deciphering exactly what her name actually was. In the 1860 census—first one in which I can find any of the Murdock family—the entry for the widow named in Samuel Murdock's household looked like it was spelled Salle, or possibly Sally. Still, we learn that she was sixty two years of age, had come to Lafayette, Indiana, from Ireland, and that she could neither read nor write.

In the 1870 census, the same woman seemed then to be living in James Murdock's household. While that enumeration, like the 1860 census, did not normally indicate relationships, in this one exception we become fortunate: the then-seventy two year old woman was listed as "Mother." Only problem: now her name was given as Sibba.

Though we learn nothing further about this mother than what we had discovered with the 1860 census, we have other resources to help us. Thanks to her son James' business success, her full name was mentioned in his biographical sketch included in a 1909 volume of Lafayette history called Past and Present of Tippecanoe County, Indiana. From that record, we discover that Sibba's full name was actually Sabina, and that her maiden name was Kelly.

Though Sabina's age given in those census records consistently seemed to indicate she was born about 1798, her 1873 headstone in the Murdock family plot at Saint Mary's Cemetery stated a birth year of 1795. Other than that, there was no other documentation to consult. Deaths were not officially recorded in the counties or state of Indiana until 1882. While a librarian at the Allen County Public Library transcribed state and county records citing deaths before that year—and made that searchable list public on the library's website—there was no entry to be found regarding Sabina Kelly Murdock. And if there were any obituary published concerning Sabina Murdock after her 1873 passing, it is not one I could locate among the online resources for Indiana newspapers of that time period.

True, I could look for church records for any mention of Sabina. After all, years ago I availed myself of microfilm rental opportunities then possible at local Family History Centers to access the records of the Lafayette diocese; these are still available online and can now be accessed by going to a local center. However, if I remember correctly, the films contained mostly baptisms and marriage records, not deaths.

While musing over my next research step, something occurred to me about that maiden name Kelly. While Kelly is such a common name, could it be possible that the Murdock family finally ended up in Lafayette for a personal reason? Were there any Kelly relatives in the area? While a conjecture like that is such a long shot, let's take some time to review the possibility tomorrow.

Without a Trace

 

Here's a curiosity: when we trace the life trajectory of our ancestors, we expect that, at some point, each person will have reached the end of their years. At that point, family members—or at least someone—will have buried their departed loved one and, at least in previous centuries, have marked their final resting place as a memorial. How, then, for a family member who lived—and, presumably, died—in the same place for decades, can we not find a trace of their passing?

I'm closing in on the supposed nine children of my husband's third great-grandfather, Michael Metzger. In addition to the four I already knew about—Michael's namesake son plus daughter Elizabeth and other two sons Henry and Jacob—we've been considering the household next door to the younger Michael's home in Jackson Township in Perry County, Ohio. In that home, the oldest listed in the 1850 census—shortly after the elder Michael's death—was a man by the name of Gregory Metzger. 

We've since discovered that two of the Metzger women in Gregory's household were eventually noted to be sisters. That, we discovered in the 1880 census, after Gregory's supposed death.

Today, I was working on locating some death records on this Metzger household. While deaths in Ohio before the 1900s were generally not noted at the state level, I happened to know from multiple trips to the Perry County courthouse years ago that the county had kept an index of deaths in the last few decades of the 1800s. Though I kept photocopied pages listing family surnames from previous visits, I had recently discovered that the entire index is now digitized and available on FamilySearch.org.

Since the two Metzger sisters we discussed yesterday had been buried in Perry County—easily seen by their memorials at Find A Grave—I thought that would be a good start for pulling up their records on the Perry County death index. Since Mary Ann Metzger was the one of the two sisters to have died the most recently, I checked first for her name—and found no entry.

Puzzled, I took a look at the entire Metzger section for Perry County. Though there were many Metzger names listed, there was none for either Mary Ann or her sister Joanna. 

Well, what about that alternate spelling, Metzgar? Since it was listed right above the alphabetical entries for Metzger deaths, I scrolled up the page to take a look. 

Nothing.

Obviously, from the photographs included on their Find A Grave memorials, both Joanna and Mary Ann were buried in Perry County. Since it was not unusual in that era for a person to have died in a different location and then to be returned to their family's burial plot back home, I began wondering just where the two women might have died.

While considering that issue, I realized someone else was missing from the death index: the very person whose will I had been seeking—Gregory. His name was missing from the Perry County Death Index as well.

I confess, that's when I caved and recalled that Find A Grave volunteers had entered two additional names as children of the elder Michael Metzger. While I certainly appreciate all the work these volunteers have done for the website, I have learned to hesitate about outright acceptance of such suggestions as document-able reality. I've found errors in the past.

The thought, however, nagged at me. After all, I have DNA test results at Ancestry.com showing ThruLines connections to two other sons. What were their names? Were they the same as the two names listed at Find A Grave?

Sure enough, the names matched up. But I can't just take those assertions at face value. You know what that means: we'll have to examine the records for ourselves, check the documentation, and then trace those lines—including the DNA matches Ancestry has discovered for me—all the way back to the Metzger line from the early 1800s. It's time to build some additional hypothetical lines to the Metzger tree.

Who Said So?

 

One of the tenets of building a family tree is to confirm assertions of fact with documentation. However, it's not just any documentation we seek, but a record as close to the event and provided by eyewitnesses to the details to approach the greatest accuracy. 

But who said so? Checking just who the eyewitness was can be an important point in clarifying whether the information is reliable. Although we've all become aware of the pitfalls of reliance on eyewitnesses—I'm thinking here of the "invisible gorilla" problem—in proving our ancestral stories, we are left with no other resource than to rely on the verification of officials.

It's when those officials must, in turn, rely on the reports of other people that we see the strength of accuracy weaken. Take death certificates: is there any time in life when loved ones are more likely, due to the stress of the moment, to forget the very details they know by heart?

And here am I, removed by one hundred years or more from the point, trying to glean from the death certificates of immigrant Michael Metzger's children where he might have been born. Is there any doubt that such "eyewitness" reports might lead a researcher astray?

While my original research goal for this month was to determine the origin of my husband's third great-grandfather, Michael Metzger senior, the man had died long before the advent of modern death certificates. However, Michael's son—also named Michael—was born before his family immigrated to Perry County, Ohio. The younger Michael's entry in the Perry County records, though also not quite as informative as the more modern death certificate records we are accustomed to seeing, did, however, report that he came from Germany (see line sixteen here).

Since the junior Michael, also an immigrant, had several children in Perry County, my thinking was to trace the death certificates of those of his children who died after the newer certificate format was adopted. Perhaps one of those newer certificates would include birth information on the deceased's father (the younger Michael).

It was a thought. But it didn't come with a helpful result.

Starting with the younger Michael's longest-living child, I could see it would be a rocky road toward finding an answer. This child, an unmarried daughter named Cecelia, died in 1943. Perhaps the length of time from Michael's own death in 1887 to that of his daughter Cecelia in 1943 may have clouded memories. Then, too, seeing that the informant on Cecelia's record was a nephew, perhaps that might have introduced mistaken reports into the record. William Welker presumed his aunt's mother had been born in Ohio—she wasn't—and then simply gave up guessing about Cecelia's father's place of birth. Verdict: unknown.

Maybe checking the death record of another Metzger child passing closer in date to Michael's own lifetime might yield better results. The one dying immediately before Cecelia was Michael's son Jacob. However, his 1928 report provided even less helpful information on Jacob's parents. Jacob's son Willard—remember, this would be a grandson of Michael, himself—was the reporting party. In his defense, Willard was born seven years after his grandfather died, so perhaps it was understandable that Willard assumed his grandfather Michael was born in Pennsylvania and his grandmother in Perry County. 

Understandable, but still incorrect.

Okay, let's try a Metzger child dying before that point—although remember, we are running out of progeny who died after that 1910 certificate format revision. The next possibility to inspect was the certificate of Michael's son John Vincent, who died in 1924. His information was provided by his wife. According to the widow, her father-in-law was born in Pennsylvania—at least agreeing with the information on her brother-in-law's death certificate four years later. And her mother-in-law was presumed to have been born in Germany.

Now, we're getting closer. But not necessarily more correct.

My last resource—as if we are voting on the most likely place for Michael to have been born—was the death report issued in 1909 for Michael's son Albert. Just because Albert's passing was the closest in time to that of Michael, don't think it will be more accurate. Again in this case, the decedent's wife served as reporting party. Albert's wife Almira—who, incidentally, happened to be a Snider, of the family line I researched last month—apparently couldn't come up with a detailed answer. The entries provided for the questions of where Albert's parents were born, simply reported: "state."

While yes, death certificates were completed almost at the point of occurrence, they include details which cannot possibly be provided by eyewitnesses attendant at the time of the event in question. Most parents die long before their children meet their own end. Even older siblings—if they were of an age to remember the event of a sibling's birth—are usually long gone by the time that sibling dies. But in this particular section of the modern death certificate, the informant is asked to report the place of birth of the decedent's parents. If recent surveys report that a majority of people don't even know all the names of their four grandparents, how are we to rely on their report of the birthplace of these same people?

Out of the four death certificates reviewed in hopes of discovering where those grandparents were born, only one indicated a foreign birthplace. And yet, there are other records indicating that not only the senior Michael Metzger was born in another country, but that his son Michael was foreign born, as well. Besides this, there are several family researchers asserting—though without showing any verification—that the native country of both Michaels was Switzerland.

While this approach did not provide any guidance in answering this question, there may be other ways to determine the answer. We'll delve into some other resources next week.

  

Double-checking

 

As you work your way through the generations on your family tree, do you double-check your work? Perhaps it might even be likely that you triple-check your work. Relying solely on one document to confirm a fact on an ancestor's timeline could lead us in a mistaken direction.

Take this quandary over the birthplace of my husband's third great-grandfather, Michael Metzger. Because he died in 1843, I can't simply expect to send away for a copy of his death certificate. Such was a document not issued in the standardized format we now expect in the United States until 1910. In some cases, though, I might be able to access the pertinent information through local death indices, if they were preserved and are now accessible online.

Another research approach can be—at least for those of Michael's children who might have died closer to that 1910 date—to check his children's death certificates for reports of where their father was born. This we tried yesterday, in comparing the records for two of his younger sons, Jacob and Henry. The other two children I have in my records had died before the new certificate style began being issued. Obviously, even double-checking records may not be enough in cases like that.

Though Michael and Apollonia Metzger likely had more than the four children I've been able to find, besides Jacob and Henry, I haven't been able to locate any other death records—with the exception of the oldest of the four, also named Michael. This son Michael happened to be foreign-born, as well, likely coming from the same place where his parents had lived before their immigration to Perry County, Ohio.

What could be found on the records for this son Michael? Because he also died before the advent of the modern death certificate, the only record available for his passing was the death index kept by the county. Handily, that record set had entries filed in alphabetical order, so not only could we peruse the birthplace entered on line fifty three for son Michael's 1887 passing, but check at a glance the same detail for all the Metzgers who died in Perry County in the 1800s—including several spelling variations.

In son Michael's case, his surname was entered as "Metzgar," not an uncommon variant. While there was no provision for birthplace of parents in this index, keep in mind that younger Michael was also foreign-born. According to the index, his place of birth was Germany.

So now, triple-checking on this Metzger family, we have one modern death certificate entry showing parents born in Switzerland, another one reporting Germany, and then son Michael, in an older reporting format, also shown as German-born. Since I'm tempted to search for yet another verification—shall we go for quadruple-checking?—I glanced over all the Metzger entries in the Perry County death index, looking for all foreign-born Metzgers. Out of the thirty seven Metzgers (and spelling variants) who died in Perry County in the 1800s, only three were listed as foreign born. And all had Germany listed as their place of birth.

Where did the "Switzerland" reports come from? After all, there have been several claims online insisting the correct place of birth was in Switzerland—such as the Find A Grave entry for son Michael. Again, as had happened for last month's goal seeking the origin of the Schneider family, those claims are out there without any substantiation.

Since the younger Michael was himself born abroad, my next thought is to see whether any of his children had died after the advent of the modern death certificate. What did their record say about the birthplace of their father? We'll take a closer look at that research avenue tomorrow.