a little blast from the past
Feb. 2nd, 2011 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutI used facebook to get in touch with a descendant of my great-uncle Harry. We've had a couple of exchanges -- I gave her full access to my ancestry.com tree and a few pages of description of Harry's brother Sam's descendants and she told me the name I've been missing, Harry's wife.
Stunningly, once I _had_ that name, it took me less than five minutes to find her death record, which, in addition to having the death date and her birth date, quite helpfully had fully filled in parents name fields and a spouse field so I was absolutely sure I had the right one. Thus, parents! Very exciting. Next up: a marriage record! I don't know why I couldn't find it via Harry's name (altho, unhelpfully, they got married in Seattle even tho both were living in Skagit at the time).
The witness fields and officiant field all shared a last name, and it wasn't either of the parties. That was unusual enough to send me looking for the officiant and look! He was in on the dedication of Swedish Hospital.
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=9623
Emil Friborg married my great-uncle.
This is _such_ a fun hobby.
Oh, and ancestry.com turned up a full name and birth year match for my great-aunt-by-marriage. She's an immigrant, too, but turns up in the England and Wales dataset. I'll have to do more research before I really believe it. [ETA: Yeah, that wasn't true.]
Stunningly, once I _had_ that name, it took me less than five minutes to find her death record, which, in addition to having the death date and her birth date, quite helpfully had fully filled in parents name fields and a spouse field so I was absolutely sure I had the right one. Thus, parents! Very exciting. Next up: a marriage record! I don't know why I couldn't find it via Harry's name (altho, unhelpfully, they got married in Seattle even tho both were living in Skagit at the time).
The witness fields and officiant field all shared a last name, and it wasn't either of the parties. That was unusual enough to send me looking for the officiant and look! He was in on the dedication of Swedish Hospital.
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=9623
Emil Friborg married my great-uncle.
This is _such_ a fun hobby.
Oh, and ancestry.com turned up a full name and birth year match for my great-aunt-by-marriage. She's an immigrant, too, but turns up in the England and Wales dataset. I'll have to do more research before I really believe it. [ETA: Yeah, that wasn't true.]