I have some patrons who bring me extremely interesting research. In my last post I wrote about Jack and his quest to find out more about the uncle he is named after who died in WWII. This past week Jack returned to my desk with an object he said I would not believe; and he was right.
Jack brought in a deep shadowbox frame; about 18"x 18" and 4 inches deep. Contained in it was a round ornate circular silver frame. At the center of which was a 3 inch circular photo of a couple in their mid to late 50s, maybe very early 60s. Curved around the top of the photo it said 1878-1903; beneath it said 2 May. Around the couple's photo were 1 inch round photos of 5 younger people; presumably their children. This was a silver wedding anniversary frame; silver in color and material, as well as in the fact that it is a 25th anniversary commemorative frame.
Jack proceeded to tell me how this was in the home his parents bought in 1969 in Flushing, Queens, NY. Jack surprisingly knew the name of the previous homeowner. Do you know the name of the person who owned the house you grew up in? I sure as heck don't.
Even though their was no indication on the object as to who was in the photos, Jack believed it belonged to the former homeowner and wanted to get it back to the family. The former homeowner's name was George Washington Anger. I guess that is a pretty hard name to forget.
A search for George quickly resulted in finding his WWI draft registration card. The card confirmed that George lived in Flushing and it provided his date of birth which made subsequent searches much easier.
From there we back up through the U.S. Federal Census records, 1940 to 1930 to 1920 etc, to find George living with his parents at the address Jack had grown up at. Sure enough, George was 1 of 5 children of August and Caroline Anger.
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| 1900 Census |
Turning our interest to the parents, we found their marriage record in the New York, New York Marriage Index as, wouldn't you have it, 2 May 1878. This frame was theirs and those photos were these people we had seen in all these records.
Jack then asked if we could find any living family members. I always tell my patrons that it is easier to find the dead than it is to find the living. We took a shot though and searched the public family trees on Ancestry.com. We found someone who appeared to be the great-great grandson of August and Caroline. Using my personal Ancestry.com account I was able to email the tree owner through Ancestry. I could see this Ancestry user was an active researcher because he had had an account since 2012 and had last logged in 2 days before.
We simply sent a note saying I was a genealogy librarian working with a patron who had an object that might be of interest to him if he was indeed related to this couple.
Today Jack and I received a reply to that email saying that yes, those are his great-great grandparents and that he would be delighted to know what we have in store for him.
I know that it is Jack's wish to see this object back in the hands of a family member who will love and cherish it as much as he has all these years - these strangers whose house he once lived in.
Direct ancestors get researched all the time. Their graves are often visited and well tended, but those who left no heir, and sometimes not even a single record (like children who died between the censuses), those souls call to me.
Like my Cousin Mary over at Heritage & Vino I too have a strong affinity for those family members who left no heirs. Cousin Mary recently wrote about the siblings, Rebecca & Jacob Raynor; neither married but both obviously left strong impressions on the nieces and nephews around them.
I have recently been struggling to obtain a birth record from the City of New York for my relative, John Fay, who died in WWII and left no heirs. Part of the struggle is that I am not his direct descendant. I just want to document his existence for my family. Don't get me started...
BUT I have recently had some brilliant success, though, helping a patron connect with people that I will call his cousins even though they aren't really. Let me explain.
My patron, who I will call Jack, came to see me in search of information about the uncle he was named after but never knew. Uncle Jack died in WWII and is buried oversees. This patron came with a photo in hand of his Uncle Jack besides a woman who we believe to be Uncle Jack's wife; her name was unknown.
After some poking around on Ancestry.com we found a record for Uncle Jack in the U.S. Headstone and Interment Records for U.S. Military Cemeteries on Foreign Soil, 1942 - 1949 dataset. Had we just looked at the indexed information and not opened the actual image file we would have never seen the note that in 1965 a woman in Missouri requested a photo of Uncle Jack's headstone in France.
We both suspected this woman, Helen, might be Uncle Jack's wife and so we set off on researching what became of her which lead us to a post on FindAGrave.com that included a photo of Helen. Although the FindAGrave photo showed a woman much older then the one in the photo with Uncle Jack, there was definitely a resemblance. I reached out to the FindAGrave contributor to see if perhaps he was related to the woman in the photo he posted.
In short time I received a response from the contributor. Unfortunately he was not related to Helen but he got the image from her online obituary which he sent to me. The obituary was a gem. It told of her life with great detail and mentioned that the last feat she wanted to accomplish before her passing was to write an autobiography. At the end of the obituary it listed all her children and their spouses by name and the cities they lived in when she passed in 2016.
I immediately went to Facebook and searched for her children who all had quite unusual names. I wrote to three people who I was 99% certain would be her kids but I still wasn't sure if Helen was Uncle Jack's wife. I told them that I was a NY genealogist working with a man who might have a connection to their mother. I asked if they had ever heard of her having a first husband who died in WWII. If so, I asked if I could get a copy of her autobiography. The next morning I received a response.
Yes, my mom Helen's first husband was [Jack], who died in WWII. ...As for the autobiography, it is 109 pages long and I only have my copy. Pages 19 through 24 are about [the Uncle Jack].
This was them. This was my patron's uncle's widow's family. That being said, obviously, there is no biological connection between my patron and these children of Helen; especially given the fact Helen's children are all adopted. But what makes family is not simply genetics.
Souls who leave no heirs does not mean they did not leave family, they most certainly did. They loved and influenced people around them and those energies emit long passed one's lifetime.
