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Archiver > APG > 2008-07 > 1216081292


From: Patti Hobbs <>
Subject: Re: [APG] Evaluating and revising
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 19:21:32 -0500
References: <071420081551.18509.487B75F6000C13BF0000484D22216125569B0A02D29B9B0EBF9D0A02040703D2049A0E9F@att.net>
In-Reply-To: <071420081551.18509.487B75F6000C13BF0000484D22216125569B0A02D29B9B0EBF9D0A02040703D2049A0E9F@att.net>


I know that everyone into genealogy has a million stories to tell, but
I've been dying to tell anyone about my recent "new" find and the
correction of an error I was excited to discover. And it was just as
you describe here, Paul --it was in my files all along. I had
supposed an ancestor of mine born in 1840 was the daughter of a John
and Margaret Edwards because there is a child of the right age in
Margaret's household in 1850, but her name wasn't exactly right. The
person I was looking for was Margaret, and so I thought the child
"Minda" (census) or "Merida" (guardianship papers in a probate
packet) of the right age and in the right location was bearing a
nickname because she carried the same name as her mother. I had run
into two problems. One was that she later had a sister living with her
during a census and there is no sister by that name in the original
probate packet. Then a newspaper account says that Uncle Tamsett (to
one of her children) comes to visit, and I did not know of any Tamsett
marriages of the other daughters. There were other ways that the
Tamsett connection could be explained though, so that didn't bother me
too much.

I decided to go back through the probate packet--and there are
actually three packets (John, Margaret, and their oldest son Henry) --
to see if the "sister" was actually in her uncle's household since he
was her guardian, and he had died thus creating two sets of
guardianship papers with names of the children in the John and
Margaret Edwards household. I thought perhaps she thought of her (the
woman in her household in a census) as her sister because her uncle
was her guardian even though the woman would really be her cousin. So
as I'm browsing through the receipts (photos on my computer), I found
a receipt for medical attention for Merida. Then there is a bill/
receipt for "berying cloaths for Merida"....but the nail in the
coffin, so-to-speak, was that there was a bill for a "coffin for
Merida"! The person I had thought was my ancestor had died at about
age 15!

My camera ran out of batteries and I was in a hurry photographing the
papers for the one I thought was Margaret Jr.'s uncle and so the files
I have for Henry Edwards's probate packet are incomplete. No big deal
since it was only a collateral line, right? As I'm looking at the
guardianship papers in his probate packet, low and behold, I discover
that HE had a child named Margaret (no age given), and this Margaret
had a sister with the right name of the sister living with her in a
later census. And the clincher was that the alleged uncle married
Sarah Tamsett (Indiana marriage database). When I look at the 1850 in
that household, that Margaret Edwards is not the right age by two
years according to the date of birth I have for her from her
tombstone, but I'm pretty convinced it's the right person.

And it took only looking through my papers again. But now I need to
go back and get the rest of that probate packet! I'm ready to jump in
a car right now, but it's about 7 hours away.

Patti


On Jul 14, 2008, at 10:51 AM, wrote:

> It has been a good experience. It has forced me to reexamine and
> reevaluate the paper files and the documentation I have and to fill
> in the gaps. I have had the frustration of finding certificates in
> the files for the wrong people with the same name (same age, same
> occupation, same sons name, same community - but still wrong
> person). I have had the joy of finding more people to add to the
> tree and more information on people already on the tree with document!
> ation sitting in the files.
>
> My contention is that often many of the answers to our brick walls
> are already sitting in our own files and among the documents we
> already have. T

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