In my diary last week, I promised an epic rant about my gg-grandmother Anna's death certificate.
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Last week, I told you about my efforts to document the ancestors of my mom's maternal grandfather Cyrus. Although my experience was not unlike that of young Harry Potter in the restricted section of the Hogwarts library ...
... I was pretty confident that I had proven by a preponderance of the evidence that Cyrus' father was the son of Benedict Waters (aka Walter) Carey, who was born in Wilkes-Barre, PA and moved with his parents Nathan and Sally Anne (Allen) Carey to Wisconsin c1845. I was also confident that I had proven Cyrus' mother to be Anna Eliza Thornton, who was born in New York, and had moved with her parents, Isaac and Mary (Bixby) Thornton to Wisconsin between 1850 and 1860. You will recall that one of the key pieces of evidence that tied it all together was biographical information Anna had provided to the author of an old Bixby family genealogy published in 1914.
There were a few niggling details that puzzled me. First, there was old family lore that there was Irish heritage in Cyrus' family tree. Second, I did not know when his mother died. As to the Irish thing, I was mystified, since the Carey and Bixby lines had both arrived in the mid-1600s and had origins primarily in England. I suspected perhaps the Thornton line to be the most likely candidate; however, Isaac Thornton father claimed to be born in New York in census records. Since he was born in 1796, any Irish connection would be fairly remote.
So, I decided to concentrate on finding Anna's death certificate...for the time period (ie the 20th century), it doesn't seem like this should be too hard. But Anna Carey is not all that unusual of a name, and there were at least three different counties I needed to search in. After taking a gander at the vast number of obits for Anna/Anne/Mrs Careys, I put the project aside for a little bit. But then my cousin sent me our great-aunt Nina's letter.
For those who remember my November diary, sometime during the 1960s Nina had written a letter to my aunt on what she remembered about her parents' family trees. Here is what she had to say about her paternal grandparents:
Well, even though very little in that paragraph is
exactly on point, it is definitely in the general neighborhood--the sorts of things that an elderly lady might recall off the top of her head about people who died many years before. Anyway, I decided to work on finding an obituary for an Anna Carey who died in Wyeville in 1917 or thereabouts, and found this likely candidate published December 20, 1918:
The "Sunday" referred to in the obituary would have been December 15, 1918--Nina had indicated November 1917, but given the general accuracy of her information, this seemed entirely in the ballpark. So I held my breath and ordered. A copy of my order form was included with the death certificate, and the first thing I noticed was that the date of death I had specified was crossed out and "January 1918" was penciled in. I sought out the corresponding line in the actual certificate:
Oh no! Was this the wrong Anna Carey?
Whew! Name, date, places of birth and death matched that of "my" Anna. But her parents?
THOMAS Thornton??? BORN in Ireland??? And nothing on her mother? Who reported THAT information. Well, of course,
Grrrr.
So, on to her last illness and death?
And when was she buried?
So, she died on January 14, 1918, but her doctor just did not not give up for 11 months until December, finally allowing her to be buried on December 18, 1918?
To be fair, this all was taking place during the Spanish flu epidemic, and Anna was just another of the many victims of that deadly disease. I suspect the dates of last illness and burial to be correct, corresponding to the published death notice. What with demands of the epidemic, as well as issues related to WWI and perhaps Christmas and New Year's, perhaps the paperwork was not completed until the following January...with the January habit of writing the year before rather than the current year, I also believe the "January 14, 1918" date of death might have been the date the form was being filled in (eg, January 14, 1919).
In any event, this is another example of when official documents may be WRONG WRONG WRONG and there is nothing you can really do about it. Except to be sure you have a boatload of evidence to support the real story. And why the answer to "are you done researching yet" should always say be an emphatic "NO!"