Funeral Card Friday - Terry Delveaux

Funeral Card - Terry Delveaux

Funeral Card - Terry Delveaux (reverse)

In my memorial card collection I have a funeral card for Terry Delveaux. In fact he's the only Delveaux in my collection, but not the only Delveaux in my family tree. There I have two...Richard Delveaux and Alice Dart nee Delveaux. Terry died relatively young. He was 44 years old. So it was likely that at least one of his parents survived him.

I did a search on Ancestry.com for Terry with his birth and death information included in the search and didn't come up with much. There were hits, but they were from the Wisconsin Death Index and the SSDI which confirmed the information on the memorial card. There was also a hit on the Wisconsin Marriage Index that shows Terry got married on September 15, 1973 to a woman with the surname of DeGrand. No first name is given (even when I performed a search on her). Of course it pays to not just read the transcription but to actually look at the record because when I look at the record Terry isn't married to a woman with the surname of "DeGrand." He's married to Rebecca Jean LaLuzerne. Even how old she was is off. Still none of it tells me who his parents were.

So I went to FindAGrave, but there was no memorial created for him. I then jumped on Google and did a search for "obituary Terry Delveaux" and hit gold. The first hit was an obituary for Joyce Colle-Delveaux. While she isn't one of the Delveauxs listed above she is in my family tree. Her maiden name was Cravillion and her mother was a Cayemberg. So it looks like Terry could go in my tree. The second hit was for Richard Delveaux who is one of the people in my tree...married to Joyce. As you can see by reading the obituaries (as long as the links remain active) that Terry is a child of Richard and his first wife, Lilian Massey, who died in 1989. So Terry was the step-son of Joyce. I'll still put him in my tree. I just need to link Richard to his first wife. I know plenty of people wouldn't because he's not blood related, but family isn't just about blood. Joyce is related and it was important enough that she include her step-son who predeceased her in her obituary. Her husband also predeceased her so he wasn't the one to put him in there. He was important to their family so he is important to me.

Of course we don't just put the important people in our trees (or obituaries). Sometimes important people are left out because of divorce, crimes, arguments, etc. I'll have an example of that one in the near future though.