Picking Up a Cold Trail

In police or detective work, there are often “cold” cases, mysteries that go unsolved. Sometimes it is years later when new technology or new information is discovered that the case gets re-opened for investigation. The same type of situation occurs in researching genealogy sometimes.
Case in point: I am currently working on revamping my write-up of Granny Westfall’s ancestry and I was thinking of how way back when I hit the end of the trail in trying to get a death certificate on Wilhelmina Lepper Smith. Granny had given me information on Wilhelmina including her date of death and even had a photograph of her. An early attempt to find information online led me to a gentleman by the name of Rick Huff who had a considerable amount of information on the Lepper family of Canada. Things seemed to match up as he had a Wilhelmina in his records with similar information as what I had on Granny’s Wilhelmina, as shown in the following table (sources listed in parentheses):
    Wilhelmina Lepper                                       Wilhelmina Lepper
   wife of Eliud Smith                                   daughter of George Lepper

born 4 June 1842                                    born about 1840 (age 11 on 1851
     (tombstone)                                          census in George's household)

born in Ontario, Canada                         born in Vaughan township of
   (son's death certificate)                          Ontario (1851 census)

lived in Thorold, Ontario                         of Thorold, Ontario 
    (son Eliud's birth registration)                 (pedigree chart)

had a brother named Robert                  had a brother named Robert

Irish                                                        parents came from Ireland
    (interview w/granddaughter)               (information from Rick Huff)

I wanted further proof of her parentage so I sent away for a copy of her death certificate through the vital records office in Ontario. I was unsuccessful because, according to the form letter I received back, the information I provided didn’t exactly match what was on file in their database. I was at a loss as to what to do next. How was I going to find out exactly how it was listed in the database? Did I spell her name incorrectly, or was it spelled incorrectly in the database? End of the trail. I had circumstantial evidence but not the proof I was looking for.
Fast forward roughly ten years or more. Familysearch.org started a pilot program for digitized records and included the Ontario Death Registrations from 1867 to 1937. Smith is such a common name, even in Canada, but at least I was concerned with only the province of Ontario and not the entire country. And I found Mina Smith (which is the reason Wilhelmina Smith didn’t match) listing her parents as George Lepper and Mary Valentine.
Just the parents I had suspected her to have; only now I have proof.

Wilhelmina Lepper Smith (4 June 1842-19 March 1932)
wife of Eliud Smith, daughter of George Lepper & Mary Valentine

Location: Thorold, ON, Canada

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bannerman Family Mystery

Image
Among the many old photographs originally in my grandfather's possession, there is one that has haunted me and has remained a mystery all these years. The photograph is of three children with their names and ages typeset at the bottom of the photograph. “William, 10 years, Robert 8, and Maggie Bennerman, 4 Years Old.” Who were they? My grandfather was not able to identify them, though his memory was remarkably sharp and accurate until his death at the age of 96. I first noticed this picture and the others that my grandfather had in 1989 when I embarked on the adventure of genealogy. Since then I have traced all of my father's ancestors at least back to the early 1800s (and a lot beyond). But I never ran into the Bennerman name, anywhere. Not as ancestors of mine, not even as neighbors. I am lucky enough to even have a name to match the faces in the photograph in the first place. Early in my research, I visited the Tampa stake of the LDS church and I mentioned the Bennerman na
Read more

Friday Faces from the Past: Moorefield

Image
I am perusing through old photographs from my paternal grandparents side these days. In essence, I have been visiting Kentucky although really only in my mind. Things like this come and go in spurts. I have not looked at the research I have done on these lines in a number of years but every now and them something draws me back. What pulled me this time was an email from a gentleman who saw a photograph on my blog that was taken by Randolph in Cadiz, Kentucky (see the photo here ). This gentleman informed me that he and another local historian were doing research on this photographer who did work in Cadiz from about 1893 to 1913. He wanted to know if I would share an electronic copy of the photograph and also asked if I had anymore photographs taken by Randolph. I hunted around and found one more. This is a photograph identified by my grandfather as "My daddy's first cousin [John Willis Watts], Otis Moorefield." Otis Moorefield (1875-1958) Until I put the two tog
Read more

COG: The Love of Reading

Life is funny sometimes, wouldn’t you agree? I sit here this evening checking out my blogger dashboard and find Jasia’s post about reading for the Carnival Of Genealogy . Ah, reading! One of my absolute favorite pastimes. And Jasia wants to know my family’s history of reading? How ironic that on the third anniversary of my father’s death, I am asked that question, for he was influential in the development of my love of reading. Furthermore, I was in a training at work today and we were asked to discuss characteristics about our fathers that we would like to keep, toss, or add in reference to their values, beliefs, etc. One of the items I listed in the “keep” column was his emphasis on the importance of reading and education. My mother tells the story that my father had heard that reading to your child was a good thing, so he instructed my mother to read to me every night. (Until I was about eight, he was often away because of his Navy service.) He purchased several books for me,
Read more