Tombstone Tuesday - John and Viola Vania nee Cayemberg

Tombstone of John and Viola Vania nee Cayemberg in St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery, Algoma, Wisconsin

I shared Viola's obituary previously and thanks to Jenni Lewerenz I new have the tombstone for John and Viola to share! I don't have much on John because he's not the one related to my husband. From the SSDI I have that John was born on March 31, 1894 and passed away sometime in November of 1980. Looking deeper into his passing I found in the Wisconsin Death Index that he died on November 1, 1980 and his middle name was Fred. He married Viola on March 4, 1924 in Algoma (according to her obituary). Viola was born on August 2, 1904 in Lincoln, Kewaunee County, Wisconsin (birth certificate found at the Wisconsin Historical Society) and died on November 21, 1994. Together they had eight children: Gladys, Mae, James, Lloyd, Gloria, Raymond, Donna and John. They are buried in St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery in Algoma, Wisconsin. Viola is my husband's first cousin twice removed.

*A very big thank you to Jenni Lewerenz for permitting me to share the photos she posted on FindAGrave!

Sunday's Obituary - Kate Dart nee Jadin

Clipping taken from family scrapbook

I blogged about Kate's husband, Charles Dart, previously and noted that in his obituary his wife's name was given as "Desira." It's not though. It's Kate and has been in every document and census record that I've come across. I'm sure that obituary went over like a lead balloon when the family saw it.

The obituary has some great information in it too. Dates for her birth and marriage as well as the date her husband passed away. It would have been nice to have her parents' names, but I'm not tracing back past Kate so it's irrelevant to me, but could be useful for another researcher.

Kate is buried in St. Martin's Cemetery in Tonet and has a FindAGrave memorial to visit.

"(Handwritten Feb 7, 1963)

Mrs. Kate Dart

LUXEMBURG - Mrs. Kate Dart, 81, Luxemburg, Rt. 3, died Thursday afternoon in a Green Bay hospital after an extended illness. The former Kate Jadin was born April 29, 1881, in Tonet, and married Charles Dart on Sept. 12, 1902 at St. Martin Church, Tonet. Her husband preceded her in death on June 10, 1935.

Survivors include one son, Fred J., Luxembourg, Rt. 3; one daughter, Mrs. John (Libbie) Jandrin, Algona, Rt. 1; six grandchildren; 15 great grandchildren; three sisters, Mrs. Josie Jacques, De Pere; Mrs. Louise Dart, Green Bay, and Mrs. Lena Dart, Luxembourg.

Friends may call at McMahon Funeral Home, Luxemburg, after 8 p.m. Saturday. The Rosary will be recited at 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Funeral services will be at 10 a.m. Monday at St. Martin Church, Tonet, with burial in the church cemetery."

Wedding Wednesday - Brown-Tabor Engagement

Standard Speaker, 30JUN1964, pg 15

Mommy! Yeah...my mom's a babe. I love this picture. I had never seen it until I came across it searching newspapers. I'm so glad I found it though!

"Mr. and Mrs. Edward J. Brown, 576 West Green street, announce the engagement of their daughter, Alice, to Paul C. Tabor, son of Clarence P. Tabor, and the late Mrs. Florence Tabor, 230 East Broad street, West Hazleton.

Miss Brown was graduated from Hazleton High School in 1962 and attended Marywood College, Scranton.

Mr. Tabor was graduated from Hazleton High School in 1960 and is employed by Allied Egry Business Forms, Philadelphia, as cameraman."

You know when I got married I didn't even think to put anything in the newspaper. Not the news in Hawaii nor the news back in Hazleton, PA. Maybe if I remained in my hometown it would have been something I thought of. Being stationed elsewhere, well, it never even crossed my mind. If it didn't cross my mind for my marriage I can tell you that it certainly didn't for my engagement. I also didn't do any engagement photos. I had a photographer at my wedding, but those pictures were for family, not for the papers.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that I disagree with the tradition. I love it in fact. I regret not thinking about it. If I had I most certainly would have done it. Now that my hubby and I are civilians and (hopefully) not moving much anymore I will certainly be making sure that there is something in the local papers when my sons are married. For their engagement that will depend on who they marry. Traditionally it was just the woman that got her picture in an engagement announcement, but it's a little different now. Sometimes you've got the couple in the picture. I'd actually like to see that.

Right now I'll live vicariously through my mom and her beautiful photo in her engagement announcement.

Tombstone Tuesday - Anton and Matilda Hermans nee Lameroux

Tombstone of Anton C. Hermans in Holy Cross Cemetery
Two Rivers, Manitowoc, Wisconsin

Anton Hermans married Mathilda Lameroux on October 13, 1903 in Tonet, Kewaunee County, Wisconsin.

On their marriage certificate her name is spelled with an "H" and without on her tombstone. Her last name on the marriage certificate doesn't quite look like it's spelled "Lameroux" but I have no training in French so I'm siding with the general family tree consensus here. To me it looks like Lamourenx, but that just looks odd.  I'm posting an excerpt from the marriage certificate that has her name on it below if anyone would like to give it a go. When I get the opportunity I'll try to find her in a census before she married Anton and see if it sheds some light on the spelling.

Tombstone of Matilda Hermans in Holy Cross Cemetery
Two Rivers, Manitowoc, Wisconsin

The tombstones only give the birth and death years for both individuals so that doesn't help me find an obituary. Several family trees did have Anton as passing on February 21, 1950 so I can use that and the location of their burial to try to find one. Perhaps her maiden name and date of death will be in his obituary. A genealogist can hope!

Anton is the son of John Baptist (Jean Baptiste) Hermans and Antoinette Dart. He was the 7th of 8 known children.

Rest in peace Anton and Matilda!

*Thank you to Nona Forrest for permission to use her FindAGrave photos.

Matrilineal Monday - Finding Nancy

We all have brick walls and brick walls with female ancestors can be particularly painful especially if you don't know their maiden names. A maiden name wasn't the issue with this particular ancestor though. Neil and Nancy Brown nee McCoy were born in Ireland (although I don't know where) and were the parents of six children....eight by some accounts because it appears they may have adopted two boys, Patrick Timmoney and Michael Brown. When I couldn't go farther back in this line than Neil and Nancy I did as much research as I could on their children. Who did they marry? When did they die? What children did they have? It was this lateral research that helped me eventually find out more information on Nancy. That and a little help from others.

My cousin, Nancy O'Donoghue nee Brown, helped me with why I couldn't find Nancy in records and why this "Annie" chick was living my 2nd great grandfather...Nancy's husband. Who the heck was this "Annie"!?!?! Nancy explained to me that Ann or Anna or Annie was a common nickname/diminutive for Nancy and that it was the same person. Sort of like John = Jack, James = Jim, Richard = Dick/Rick/Rich. That small bit of intel really helped my sanity. Nancy and I collaborated on our family trees up until she passed away. Just before she passed I was able to share with her the location of Neil and Nancy's tombstone. It was in Saint Gabriel's Cemetery in Hazleton, Pennsylvania where we knew it must be. We just hadn't been able to find it until we got some more help.

The caretaker for the cemetery, Rick, was on the premises when my mother and I visited in 2010 so we got to ask him if he could confirm if they were in the cemetery and where their tombstones were located. He was able to do both. There were several tombstones for various Browns and Neil Browns in the cemetery. He pulled out his binder and we were able to see when someone was buried. I knew Neil died before the 1900 census. There was someone that matched and he walked us right to the tombstone.

She was listed as Nancy on her tombstone, but not her death certificate!

The tombstone helped to confirm what I knew. Neil did pass after the 1880 census and before the 1900 census. Nancy passed after the 1920 census. So I (eventually) went to the Pennsylvania Death Certificates that were online to look for her.

If you have family from Pennsylvania and you haven't used this resource you really need to...and it's free! Well, from what I can see it's free to Pennsylvania residents here (start by entering your zip code at the bottom of the page) and is included with an Ancestry membership here. Either way with how much I've discovered it's paid for the membership I have many times over. Moving on....

So after seeing the tombstone (and unless there was a mistake on the stone) I knew Nancy/Annie died in 1926. Move a head a few years and being able to access the Pennsylvania death certificates online and I came up with a possible match:

Excerpt of Nancy/Anna Brown nee McCoy's death certificate

It was even the top hit. I didn't search for "Nancy" or "Annie" but I did search for the surname Brown in Luzerne county with a death year of 1926. This Anna Brown had a husband named Neil, was born in Ireland, and died in the right year. Was that proof enough for me that it was her? Not necessarily. She is listed as being married on the certificate and I know Neil died many years before she did. I also know that putting married instead of widowed is a common mistake on death certificates as well as census records.

I looked further into the death certificate and saw that she was buried in Saint Gabriel's Cemetery which was one of my family cemeteries, but it's a huge one and that wouldn't confirm much. Then I saw the informant on the death certificate was Owen McElwee. Now that's a name in my family tree! Owen was the husband of her oldest daughter, Bridget. I went on to look at the 1920 census to check out the address and found that she was living with Bridget and Owen before she died. 

Excerpt of Nancy/Anna Brown nee McCoy's
death certificate

Now how correct is the rest of the information on the death certificate? It wasn't given by her daughter, but by her daughter's husband. The information could certainly be wrong, but so many of these records for my ancestors simply state "unknown" for the person's foreign-born parents that seeing something at all makes me very hopeful. I'll have to verify it in some way, but it's information I didn't have before. Finding Nancy's death certificate didn't give me an exact date of birth, but it did give me her death date and possible parents. 

This is the point in my blog post where I would normally say that the next time I'm in Pennsylvania I'll pull her obituary, but I can't. There is no microfilm for the Hazleton newspapers at the public library for that year. The Hazleton Standard Speaker has some of the years missing at the library in their vaults, but I don't have access. I'm hoping that Newspapers.com will get them to share at some point in the future and maybe I'll find the obituary, but it's not happening yet. I'll still enter it onto my research calendar, but with little hope of finding it any time soon.

Sunday's Obituary - Mary Hermans nee Laurent

The Luxemburg News, 12DEC1924, pg1

Well there were two ways for me to show this obituary. Too small to read and OH MY GOSH huge. I went with huge because at least others will be able to read it in case I made any transcription errors.

As I was working on my Hermans line I came across the marriage certificate for Mary Laurent and Desire Hermans and noticed that I already had both in my tree. Different branches of my husband's family but they merged in some places. They weren't necessarily related to each other. They were from lateral lines. Still I've been noticing that with a number of the marriages in his Belgian line. If you think about it you'll realize that it makes sense. Traveling great distances wasn't common. You knew your neighbors and your neighbors were also generally the same ethnicities. People came over to America and settled within micro ethnic communities. So if you were going to get married to someone it was going to be someone that lived nearby. A neighbor.

Perhaps a brother was courting the girl down the street and she had a sister. Maybe his other brother started courting her and then they both end up getting married. It happened quite often. That's why it can be important to check out the other people on a census page because you may find that they are also in your family tree.

It's quite sad to see a parent die at the age of 47. It was quite a long obituary. They really wanted to memorialize her. It's got some great information too. Her kids' names and who the daughters married. Even the children who predeceased her are in there. The brothers and sisters in the second to last paragraph could be cleaned up a bit more and it would have been nice to mention her parents' names (Philippe and Theresa Laurent nee Francart), but it's a really great obituary for 1924 and it made the front page.

Now this article was published on Friday, December 12th and it said that she died "last Monday" so I'm assuming that was the 1st not the 8th because I figured that they'd just say "Monday" if it was the 8th. Well, in the body of the obituary it does say on Monday so which is it? The 1st or the 8th? I'm going to put the 8th in my tree with a note about the confusion next to it. Since her obituary was the day before the article was published it's likely that the Monday they were referring to was the one closest to it too. Sometimes not, but perhaps something else will turn up in the future to firm this up for me. With death certificates getting more and more expensive I won't be requesting that unless I need it for other research.

Mary is buried in St. Martin's Cemetery in Tonet, Wisconsin. You can check out her FindAGrave memorial here.

"Tonet Resident Passed Away Last Monday

Mrs. Desire Hermans Dies Following Lingering Illness

(unk) Forty Seven Years of Age

Funeral Services Were Held Thursday Morning.

TONET - Mrs. Desire Hermans, nee Mary Laurent, answered the final call of death Monday morning at the hour of 11:00 o'clock following an illness of nine weeks. Deceased suffered with a goitre (sic) and had been confined to the St. Mary's hospital at Green Bay for a period of seven weeks, returning to her home about two weeks previous to her untimely death. Her death is attributed to Heart Failure.

Mrs. Hermans was born in the town of Luxemburg on April 26, 1877, having reached the age of forty-seven years, seven months and twelve days up to the time of her death. She had been a resident of the town of Luxemburg until her marriage to Desire Hermans in September 1897, which was solemnized in the St. Joseph's Catholic church at Champion. To this happy union nine children were born, two who preceded their mother to death, namely, Mrs. Louis Dubois and Fred Hermans.

Mrs. Hermans as a resident on a farm at Tonet was well known throughout the vicinity. She was known to be a hard worker in the interest of the family, a kind mother, a good christian, and a woman who loved to do kind and helpful works for others. Her death takes away one of the kind citizens and will be missed throughout the community.

Beside her husband the deceased is survived by the following children: Frank, Henry, Joseph, William, Mrs. William Vanderveet, Agnes and Josephine of Tonet, and the following sisters and brothers, Mrs. Nestor Debeck, Anton and Victor Laurent of Luxemburg; Mrs. Norbert Delcore of the town of Green Bay; Desire Laurent of Bay Settlement; John Laurent of Green Bay; Joe Laurent of Niagara, Wisconsin.

Funeral services were held Thursday morning at ten o'clock from the St. Martin's Catholic church at Tonet. Revered L. A. Dobbelsteen officiated at the last sad rites. Interment took place in the parish cemetery."

Funeral Card Friday - Edith Dart

Memorial Card - Edith Dart (reverse)

Memorial Card - Edith Dart

Last week I shared the memorial card for Eli Dart. Edith is Eli's wife, but I don't know her maiden name. As I mentioned I'll be pulling their obituaries whenever I get back to Wisconsin to check for a maiden name, but it's not always there. It's always frustrating to a genealogist to see someone listed in an obituary as "Mrs. Insert-Husband's-Full-Name-Here" and then no mention of who she was before she married him. I know it was how things were done, but it was stupid even back then (cue the righteously indignant). I'll stick with that though because people that may have known a woman in her childhood and didn't know who she married would have no idea that it was someone they wanted to pay their respects to when an obituary was posted in the newspaper. So I get that it was the norm for certain periods, but I'm going to exercise my right to grumble about it anyway.

Edith was born on July 10, 1899 and passed away on October 13, 1981 (FindAGrave memorial) about four months before her husband. They weren't separated for long. Rest in peace, Edith.