Copy once, look twice -- or something like that

I have written before about the importance of looking hard at even the most tentative clues in genealogy -- census records that don’t seem worth examining because the dates, birthplaces, or even surnames seem too far removed; references in letters that don’t look pertinent, and on and on. Well, here is another example, from my own research:

I’ve always copied down a lot of items just because they seemed, at the time, to have some connection to my surnames, however slight.  But all too often the notes get consigned to a folder where they lie, forgotten.  In this case, while trying once more to find out what happened to my great-aunt’s son, Franklin Lee Parkison, I was going back through a collection of those set-aside notes. What caught my eye was a pencilled notation I must have made in the days before computers, from the WPA’s “Index to Death Records for Jasper County (Indiana), 1882-1920.” It read: ParkiNson, Frank S., white, male, single, age 56, died 19 July 1919,  Rensselaer, Indiana.  Well, to start with, the surname has an “n” (but Parkison is often misspelled that way), and the middle initial is wrong.  Then, my faulty math led me to dismiss the possibility that this might by my guy. Let’s see, 56 from 1919 means a birth year of 1863. Oh oh. That actually matched what I did know about Frank’s birthdate, as did the likely place of death. (I knew from a letter by his mother that he had been in that area three years earlier.)

As anyone else who searched in Jasper County knows, there hasn’t been much available at the Family History Library (though they seem to have acquired more public records recently). So my searches there have not been fruitful. In a flash of inspiration (why did it take me so long?), I decided to go directly to the source for this WPA index. It was a simple matter to contact the Public Health Department in Rensselaer and learn the procedure for obtaining the death record for this so-called Parkinson individual.

When it arrived, lo and behold, the names of his parents matched, confirming that their “Frank S. Parkinson” was really MY Frank L. Parkison! (Unfortunately the document was a transcription, not a photocopy of the original, so I couldn’t tell how the errors happened.)

This solved, for me, what had been a very long-standing search for the date and place of Frank’s death. (There was another Frank Parkison in the area at the time, which confused matters somewhat.) Now, with a confirmed date of death in hand, I have queried the local library to see of there was a death notice or obituary which give more information.

How many other notes to I have lying around, just waiting for a fresh look and possibly a new interpretation?  What about you?

****

On another note:

I recenly mentioned a newspaper article about the smart phone app that Icelanders have, which can confirm the relationship between two possible “kissing cousins,” a necessity in this enclosed and isolated society, where nearly everyone is related to everyone else.  As it happens, I was travelling in Iceland last month (really!), and was able to ask our tour guide about it. She confirmed the program's existence as well as its usefulness "for the young people, of course."  Nice to get it from the source!

New conclusions from old clues

Sometimes old documents, revisited,  shed new light, as in the following case:

The re-reading of  a newsy letter to my paternal grandmother, written by her older half-sister, recently stirred me to action --  suddenly I was determined to try to find out more about the people whose names were scattered in its pages. The missive was dated July 14, 1916, just a few weeks before its writer, Jaley Howard Parkison Green,  died in Kansas City, MO.  My grandmother, Mary Elizabeth "Matie" Howard Cain, was living in tiny Rome City (Noble County), Indiana, at the time, but both women had grown up near Rensselaer, in Jasper County, Indiana.

Jennie Parkison (L), and  Mary E. Howard

Jaley writes about hearing of “Jennie Moody’s passing away so peacefully with all her children with her for weeks before.” She adds some details about those attentive children, then continues: “Jennie was a little school girl when I lived at her father’s home when Frank (Jaley’s son) was 5 years old. Jennie was a sweet good little girl and grew to make a good mother of a lovely family…”

I knew that Jaley had been widowed in 1862 when her first husband, Benjamin Franklin Parkison, died in the Civil War, and that she had borne a son, Franklin Lee Parkison, five months later. A quick look at the 1870 census for Jasper County showed her and Frank (by this time 7 years old) in the household of William Kenton Parkison, who was Benjamin’s brother. Also in the household was Jennie Parkison, age 13.

The Parkisons were a well-established, and prolific, family in the area, but since the only link to my Howards was this brief marriage, I had chosen not to follow up on their various other families or offspring when I first learned of the connection. I told myself there were far more closely related names I should be examining.

That resolve faded with my decision to work on Jaley’s references. Various online searches yielded the fact that one Jennie P. Moody in fact had died on July 4, 1916, in Jasper County.  And if my Jennie was living in the William K. Parkison household in 1870, as  both the census and Jaley declared, it was apparent that the intial “P”in her married name stood for Parkison. Later I found confirmation in a marriage record for Jennie Parkison and Granville Moody, in the same county.  So that nice little bit of research added some background to the remarks in Jaley’s letter.

[These searches, as you know, aren’t done in tidy chronological order. You start with what you have -- a married name and approximate death date in this case, with reference to a time and place that might be confirmed by the census, and go from there.]

But that wasn’t all.

 I keep a journal of my genealogical efforts, for inspiration and enjoyment, and yesterday I was browsing recent entries when a sentence jumped out at me: “Scanned a photo of Matie  with a playmate named Jennie.” Oh yes!!  From the styles, and my grandmother’s known birthdate, I estimated the year at about 1867, and the two girls were surely close family friends in order to have posed for a formal photograph.

The 1900 census shows Mary J. Moody (by then Jennie was Granville’s wife), was born September, 1856. My Grandmother was born a year later. All these facts, put together from a letter and a photograph, and supported by census, marriage and death records, convince me that the “Jennie” of the picture is Mary Jane (Jennie) Parkison Moody. So now I not only know who the Jennie of the Jaley’s letter is, but I have what is most likely a picture of her as a child!

It does go to show that it is important to return again -- and again -- to documents and photos for new clues, or old clues that lead to new conclusions.