What's the Story?

I suppose it's really none of my business, but I still wonder.  Stella and George had a daughter together and then divorced.  The daughter, Cordella, is listed on the 1920 census with her maternal grandfather, mother and step-father.  She is on the census with her mother and step-father in 1930 and 1940.  In 1940 she is listed with her step-father's surname.  Did he adopt her?

I found her obituary and she lists her stepfather as her father.

I found her biological father on the census.  He remarried shortly after 1920 to a woman with the same name as his first wife.  They had two children together.

The half-brother and sister are not listed in Cordella's obituary.  Did she know about them?

HOLY MOLY!  I just discovered Stella's second husband is my 6th cousin.  She is my 4th cousin 1x removed.

I'm so confused.

The website shows Claude with one wife and one son.

The Ohio Divorce Index shows him divorced from a different wife in 1997, married in approximately 1974.  Hmmm, apparently he was married twice.

The son's obituary shows his mother's maiden name as Cox instead of Lee.  His father is listed as a survivor.  There is no mention of a step-mother.  Oh my, he has a SISTER! 

As I enter data, Ancestry is finding possible matches for me.  Now I have a couple of family trees to look at. 

There is a third wife....and another daughter.  Is this wife the mother of the sister mentioned in the obituary?

Claude's obituary lists another wife and says they've been married 37 years.

Something is not right here.

Later.....

Well, I'm still confused.  I've been researching all of them trying to make sense of all of this.  Now I've discovered the one daughter is NOT Claude's (unless the wife's second husband adopted her or she used his name).   The Ohio Birth Index lists the other husband as her father.  She is not listed in Claude's obituary.  Her 'birth' father, Jerry, didn't marry her mother until four years after her birth.

Bad Words! Bad Words!

I entered family information fast and furiously for a week and then went out of town.  I discovered a family website with connections to my family.   I thought I would enter the data and then go back and document it.

I posted earlier about the back up problem, well, that was minor in some ways. 

I discovered the program has been storing my file on my c hard drive.  I always use the external drive and assumed the program was opening the file on the external drive.  WRONG! 

At this point I'm confused.  I don't think I can explain what all I've done to cause the confusion, but I've done a great job of it.

After I discovered the 'main' files on the c drive I backed up the two I determined to be the most recent and tried a merge.  I fell asleep during the merge and the computer also went to sleep.  Big mistake.

Today I tried the merge again and as soon as I spent an hour and a half going through flagged entries the Windows shut the program down.  I have to assume the files are damaged.

I restored the backups and re-backed them up.  I'm trying the merge again.  If it doesn't work this time I may want to consider re-entering the data for a third time.

The first time was on one file and had no sources other than the family tree.

I could not find the file with the week's worth of data entry.  (Damn, I wish I would have realized at THIS point about the c hard drive!)  So, the second time was on a different file and entered with sources but I didn't finish entering the data as it took longer since I documented as I entered.

The third time?  Well, I'm hoping there is no third time.  Please merge work!

Same name problems

When googling a distant cousin, I found articles that horrified me.  More investigation taught me my cousin shares a name with someone else in the area.  I feel for the cousin as we had problems in our small town with someone with the same name as my husband.  We had to get an attorney to straighten some of it out.

Not only do I feel for my cousin who probably has to constantly explain he is not the same person as the one who committed the awful crimes, my heart breaks for the child involved.

Wow, this was a stretch!

I'm working on the same family as I worked on last week because somehow, someway, I lost the data.  I backed it up before I went out of town, but the back-up doesn't have all of the new data.  While it is very frustrating, I've discovered information this time that I didn't last time because I'm slowly adding the family back to the tree.  Last time I entered as fast as I could with the intention of going back and seeing what I could find to add at a later date.  I'm also doing lots of backups which I should have done before.  I'm probably being excessive, but it's also frustrating to work on a family and know that you found more information on them and can't recreate it.

I've posted before about connecting distant cousins.  It always amazes me, and this time is no different. 

My 6th cousin, Floyd, married Hattie.  I found their three boys and a little bit about the boys.  I turned my attention to Floyd and Hattie as I only had possible birth dates for them from census records.  I found Floyd on the SSDI.  Where's Hattie?

I found a tree submitted on Ancestry with her parents listed.  I looked in my database to see if I had those names.  No, but I enter the parents name and look for a census record to verify the names.  I find one. 

The mother's maiden name is not a direct line name for me, but it is one I run across fairly often in this part of the country so, just for fun, I check to see her parents are.  I check to see if I have the parents...and oh my gosh!  I do!  Her mother is my third cousin, 3 times removed.    That makes Hattie my 5th cousin 1x removed.

Back Up

I'm still shaking my head and I'm very thankful nothing happened.  I always take a back-up of my genealogy with me when I go out of town.  Wednesday I backed up the file to take with me.  I was thrilled I found a jump drive with enough room to store it so that I didn't have to take the bigger external hard drive. 

Today I realized I NEVER put the file on the jump drive.  It's on my camera card..which did NOT go with me on the trip.  <big sigh>  All is well, but I need to pay more attention to what I'm doing!

Lewis and Mildred

Who are you Lewis and Mildred?  Lewis, you show up on  the 1920 census with my 5th cousin once removed and his wife as adopted.  Mildred, you are also on the 1920 and appear again on the 1930 as adopted.  Two different last names, three if you count my cousin's.  The two of you do not appear on any family trees I can find.  You apparently were a part of my cousin's life, why is there no record of you other than the census?

I found a Lewis that may be you.  He has a half-sister named Mildred.  Could this be you?

I'm using the parents' names listed in the obituary to see if I can back-track and find out what happened....if this is the same Lewis.