It’s Complicated!

Week 36: #52 Ancestors – Exploration

By Eilene Lyon

On any given day, I can go on a major expedition—without leaving my desk. Family history is like that. You might be tempted to call it a “rabbit hole,” and it does involve many diverting side trips, but it is goal-oriented.

Unlike building a pedigree, as many in genealogy do, I work to uncover stories. How can we understand a person if we know nothing of their extended family? I decided to spend a day exploring the relations of The Putterer’s 2^nd great-grandmother, Lucy (Keith) Lyon Rudd. The journey starts with her parents, Horace W. Keith and Sally Hill, then her siblings.

I began with Ancestry and Newspapers.com. Later I’ll venture to Family Search, Internet Archive, and other online repositories. As I built out the Keith line, I found men with multiple wives, women with multiple husbands.

A set of twins: Frances and Francis—really.

A woman with the delightful name of Ambrosia, whose first child was born out of wedlock, the second born after the death of her first husband, three children by husband two—and what the heck was her maiden name?

There’s the divorcee who called herself a widow. A very common thing to do in the 1890–1910 period. You have to wonder if these women really thought they were fooling anyone.

A girl named Frankie who went by three different surnames, though she never married in her too-brief 27 years on this earth.

Several men named Horace, not necessarily related to one another.

Horace Keith’s short (half-page) will, written 17 years prior to his death and never modified. Though it divides his estate equally between his surviving wife, Julia, and children, one decided to contest it anyway. (Verifying that bit is on the back burner at the moment).

Soon my browser has one person open on five different tabs, and I’m working on ten people at once. Yikes! You might find a clue you need on a different person’s page, so it helps to run parallel investigations. Ambrosia’s mother had a link to a Buckingham family history that gave (unsourced) birth and marriage dates for several people I was working on.

For another example:

Ancestry hints and trees combined two different men named Walter C. Brown. The last record for him with his wife and daughter (pre-divorce) was an 1892 New York census. Walter, born in February 1865, worked as a clerk then.

After 1900, Walter #1 turned up in New Jersey, married to Clarissa. He sold insurance, and was born in February 1865. Walter #2, birth date uncertain, but like Walter #1 born in New York in the 1860s, moved to Georgia and married Ida. They moved around, north and south, and Walter #2 worked as a blacksmith/machinist for a railroad. Both men had mothers named Caroline Brown. Seems crazy to conflate the two, right?

To definitively determine that Walter #1 is the right guy, I had to look at his father, Horace Brown. Two transcribed obituaries provided the key information. First, Horace’s wife Caroline died in 1899. Walter #2’s mother, Caroline, was still alive in 1918. Second, the obituaries state that son Walter lives in New Jersey and even give the correct town. I could then confidently discard all the records for Walter #2 and proceed with completing the story for the right man.

(Note: Though Walter C. Brown came originally from tiny Otselic, New York, he appears to have no connection to the family of notorious Grace Mae Brown, murder victim. One of those side tunnels in the rabbit burrow!)

After a day sorting through problems such as this, it was clear that the Keith family will never be confined to a nice, neat chart. As I cooked up spaghetti for dinner, I looked down at the nest of noodles and thought, “Yep, that illustrates family history research quite nicely!”

Feature image: Photo by Malin Strandvall on Unsplash

Horace W. Keith on Ancestry.com