Memory Monday: Two Unknowns in My Family History

My great-grandfather and his second wife

TWO UNKNOWNS IN MY FAMILY HISTORY

In the last few years, I have come to love working on my family’s genealogy. Both of my mother’s branches were from Mennonite backgrounds and there are many records to use. In the same manner, my father’s mother’s history is well-documented. I know where all three of these branches of my family came from, when they entered the United States, and thanks to US census records, I know where they lived, what their occupations were, and how many children they had and when/when they were born and died.

There is problem with my paternal grandfather’s family. I know what his name was, when he was born, and in what state. But that doesn’t narrow things down enough. There were a number of families in that state with the same last name and many of them named a son born about the same time with the same name. (GR-R-R). After following several of the different families in that state through the years, I was able to dismiss all but one. Several things point to this being the right family—the age for my great-grandfather’s birth is right, the states where his mother and father were born are correct, this man’s father and mother (although divorced some time before) both had moved to the county and state where my great-grandfather was married, and the man’s father later moved from Iowa to the same county in Texas were my grandfather was born. (Are you thoroughly confused so far?)

Now I have two problems with attaching this man as my great-grandfather’s father. The first is that on one—and only one, and that being when he lived in a boardinghouse— US census, this man is listed as having been born in Ireland. All the other censuses have him born in Georgia. The other problem is that on my great-grandfather’s death certificate, his father’s name is listed as “Isaac,” not “Michael” like the censuses I have been following. The information was listed by one of his sons, while the other son gave the information on their mother’s death certificate.  The second son listed their mother’s father’s name as “Isaac.” Were both of their grandfather’s names “Isaac” or was there a bit of confusion? After all, both of their parents died in their 70s, and their grandfathers had passed on decades before. Oh, well, I’ll just have to keep searching.

The other unknown is about my great-grandfather’s second wife—they are picture above. He and his first wife divorced in 1904 and he married again the next year—he was 53 and she was 26. Other than her name showing up on US censuses and city directories, I can fine no  other record of her—what her maiden name was, where she was born, if she had any other family, and what happened to her after my great-grandfather died after more than twenty years of marriage to her. It makes everything so incomplete.

Well, that’s two of the unknowns in my family. Do you have any of those kinds of unknowns in yours?