Beyond Fiction

Thanks to a volunteer at Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness, I now have a copy of the obituary for Martin Isaic Spangler’s youngest child, Lonnie Lawrence Spangler. Here is a transcript of the obituary:

Lonnie Lawrence Spangler, 48, died Tuesday in Loma Linda. A native of Sherry, Tex., he had lived in Redlands for many years and was a resident of Highland.
Survivors include the widow, Wilma, of Highland; two daughters, Mrs. Barbara Jo Henderson of San Bernardino and Mrs. Shirley Jean Coleman of West Monroe, La.; two brothers, John Carl Spangler of Portland, Ore., and Charles M. Spangler of Wichita, Kan.; three sisters, Mrs. Dora Jones of San Diego, Mrs. Cecil Townsley of Austin, Tex., and Mrs. Ella Ferguson of Harlingen, Tex.; and 10 grandchildren.
Services are pending at F. Arthur Cortner Chapel, Redlands.

I’ve learned a lot from this obituary. I’ve learned Lonnie’s wife’s first name, The married names of two of his daughters, and the fact that he had 10 grandchildren. That in itself is a lot more research to do.

I’ve also learned that John was in Oregon, Charles was in Kansas, Dora was now a Jones and living in San Diego, Cecil is now a Townsley and living in Austin, and Ella has gone back to Ferguson and is still in Harlingen. I’ve also learned that, apparently, Henry, Eva and James are all not listed which means that they must have died before April 1962. Of course, there is also the possiblity of not knowing where they were or whatever but my first guess is probably right.

My next step is to try to figure out the maiden name of Wilma, figure out who Barbara and Shirley married and figure out the birth dates of their children. I also hope to use the information gathered to find out more about Dora and Cecil. Maybe now I can find Ella in Harlingen. I had been looking for an Ella Robinson!

That’s it for today. I have to get ready for work and I’ll holler back tomorrow!

I just wanted to post about a find I made today just by chance!

Yesterday I was doing some more searching for descendants of Martin Isaic Spangler and was looking for a volunteer for Harris County, Texas on RAOGK. I just happened to notice that there was a volunteer for Harrison County and the name stuck out. It was someone I had corresponded with earlier in my research on my maternal side. His act of kindness was to look up old marriage licenses.

Well, just for the heck of it, I asked him if he would see if he had a record for George Charles Forbes and someone named Lee. I gave him the timeframe of 1914 through 1922.  I didn’t expect anything at all. I just thought I would try it.

Last night he wrote and said there was a listing for a George Charles Foster and Anna Lee Bayliss but that he wanted to see if it was actually Foster or not. Today, he wrote and sent me this:

Well, as you can see it is definitely Forbes! This is so cool. You see, I have heard from several of my aunts and uncles that my grandfather was married once before his marriage to my grandmother. They said that his first wife died in childbirth, as well as the child. All they could give me was the name “Lee”. I had searched for something to prove this but never could find it. Now, simply by chance, I have a marriage record that I believe is definitely the one I am looking for!

Isn’t it great when you are able to find things just by chance? I can’t wait to share this with the rest of the family.

Wow, I can’t believe that I am still writing about this! It seems that since I posted about this that I’ve just been able to find more and more about the descendants of Martin. Not enough to make contact with anyone yet but I do feel I am getting closer. I just felt it was time to update my finds on this line.

In my last post I detailed about finding some info on his granddaughter Stella and I have posted most of what I found on her and her husband. I reconsidered on posting the articles about the murder-suicide and another article about her son and brother. I just didn’t think it would be appropriate and it wouldn’t win any points if I did ever find any of her descendants. Today, I want to let you all know what I have been able to find on some of Martin’s children, thanks to my research trip to Clarksville, Texas on Friday. Knowing the full names of some of Martin’s children and knowing the birth dates has helped me to get a little closer to seeing this line come to fruition. Here is what I have on the children of Martin Isaic Spangler:

• Nancy Ellen Spangler - this is the actual name of Ella Spangler, the mother of Stella Mae Ferguson. Knowing her full name hasn’t helped yet, but I am hoping to find more on her soon. I do have her birth date now so that may help and I know that she remarried after her husband’s death to someone named Robinson.
• Henry Spangler - Henry is still somewhat of a mystery. I couldn’t find any birth info on him on my research trip so I am still uncertain of him. I did find a marriage for an H. J. Spangler on my trip so I obtained it and I am hoping that it will be him.
• Dora Lee Spangler - Having her complete name, birth date and the name of her husband hasn’t helped much. I still can’t find her in the 1930 census and I can’t find anything about her husband because he used what I suspect is a nickname on the wedding license. I still hold out hope though.
• Eva Spangler - Eva is just like Henry. She is a total mystery. No birth record, no death record, no records of any kind.
• John Carl Spangler - This is one of the ones that I have had some success on thanks to my trip on Friday. Knowing the complete name and birth date helped me to look him up in the SSDI and from there to find him in the death records of Oregon. I even managed to find an article about him arriving in California on the USS Cossatot. I’ve got a request in to RAOGK and hopefully an obituary will give me some more clues.
• Cecil Lolo Spangler - She is still a mystery but at least I have a name for her now. Before I only had Unknown Spangler because I couldn’t make out the writing in the 1910 Census. I believe I had an SSDI hit on her but I am not totally sure yet.
• James J. Spangler - James is the trifecta for Eva and Henry. A total mystery!
• Charles Morris Spangler - Knowing his complete name has led me to find his SSDI record and hopefully I can obtain an obituary through RAOGK to fill in some of the blanks. I do know that he died in Clark County, Indiana now!
• Lonnie Lawrence Spangler - Lonnie is the youngest of Martin’s children and lets me know that Martin was still around in 1913. The SSDI lets me know that Lonnie died in San Bernardino County, California and will hopefully help me to find more about him through an obituary. One nice thing about studying Lonnie has been that I have been able to find his mother’s maiden name through the California Death Records on Ancestry. Now I can call her Laura Luallen instead of Laura (?).

So, there you have it. I’ve gone from having a list of first and last names with no middle names and guesstimates of birth dates to having quite a few full names, birth dates, death dates and some info on the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Martin Isaic Spangler. Quite successful so far and I believe I will be able to find more soon.

Hmm, maybe I should post an article about another elusive ancestor? It seems to help get the old juices flowing and get the info to coming in!

Have a great week everyone!

It’s getting close to the deadline for the Carnival Of Genealogy and I wanted to try to make sure that I got a little story in about my favorite pet of all, Rocky! Please bear with me as I write this as I am a little inebriated at the moment! (Good times at the baby shower tonight!)

Rocky was given to us by my Aunt Ellen & Uncle Bert (I believe) and was a great little dog. I think the only real problem we ever had with him was that he was afraid of storms. If I recall right, he had been left outside during a tornado when he was a puppy and was terrified of any thunderstorm. He would scratch at the front door until his little paws would give out and once or twice he actually made it all the way through the door!

My two older brothers were Rocky’s primary “masters” but when they grew up and moved out Rocky became my good friend. He would go with me everywhere I went. He was afraid of nothing (other than thunderstorms) and would do anything to protect me. I remember one time that he took on 3 German shepherds while I took off running. He came home all beat up but he still watched out for me!

Rocky was also a very strange dog! He had a strange way with cats. Don’t ask me how he did it because I never figured it out but I remember so vividly coming outside and seeing Rocky sitting in the front yard just like always except for his rear end. It would be moving crazily and you couldn’t help but wonder what was up! Strangely, every time there would be a cat underneath him! It’s like he would fight with a cat and then sit on it! I don’t know if he was trying to smother it or if he was just showing the cat how dominant he was! Either way it was a strange site!

We also loved to torment poor Rocky. We would call him to us by saying, “Come here, Rocky, come here!” and he would come up to you and we would keep saying it as if we didn’t notice him. After a few moments of this he would just start howling as loud as he could. We were so mean, weren’t we?

I also remember another time when my dad was upset with Rocky because he had tore through a door scratching it during a storm and he put him in the truck and drove to the Devil’s Bowl Speedway and dumped him out in the country. It was probably about 20 miles or so from home. I was so heartbroken. I cried a lot. A few weeks later we were surprised to see little Rocky pulling himself up the street. He was in pretty bad shape but he had fought his way home and was back with us again. My dad could never bring himself to do that ever again.

Sadly, one night during a storm, my sister and I locked Rocky in one of the cars in our back yard so that he wouldn’t tear up the door. However, we forgot to crack the windows like we normally would. We got up the next morning and went to school and it wasn’t until that afternoon that we remembered him.

It was way too late!

Our friend and my companion was gone! My dad once again drove out to Devil’s Bowl Speedway to drop Rocky off, but this time it was for good! I cried and cried and cried and I believe I even saw my daddy cry that night! How sad it was.

I’ll never forget ol’ Rocky and I’ve never had a pet that I was as close to since.

Picture #1 - Rocky and my brother Charles.

Picture #2 - Rocky and my brother Robert.

I wish I had a picture of myself and Rocky but unfortunately I can’t find one!

OK, I’m not trying to be negative but I had an incredibly eye-opening experience today. On my research trip today I was excited to finally go searching for birth and death records of folks who were born in the late 1800s and died in the very early 1900s. How wonderful it would be to get some of the information off of those records!

The woman at the County Clerk’s office was very nice and helpful and the indexes were so good. The problem was that in order to get a death certificate that was almost 100 years old I had to fill out a form detailing my relationship and then pay $21.00 for a death certificate and $23.00 for a birth certificate. I asked why I couldn’t just get a regular, uncertified copy and was told that all they have now is the certified copies. Well, that was very surprising to me! I am being charged $20 something for copies of certificates that I’ve been getting online for free or for just $50 a year at Footnote! What’s up with that?

<START RANT>

For those who complain about having to pay for access to services such as Footnote, why not think about this. If I had paid the price at the court house for the death certificates I have obtained from Family Search for free (55), then the total price would be $1, 155! That is ridiculous! What’s worse, some of the death certificates I have gotten from Family Search are not even on the index at the court house! The same goes for the birth indexes at the court house and what I have gotten on Footnote!

And that is not including the cost of gas if I had to drive all over Texas looking for them!

I think I will take a very different approach when it comes to paying for access to certain records! I know now that things could be a lot worse! I am also convinced that some folks need to step back and think about things before complaining about paying for services online!

<END OF RANT>

Today has been a very good genealogy day. I had a lot of luck on my trip to the Red River Valley Court House in Clarksville. I was able to come away with several marriage records, I was able to get a few birth dates and correct some names and had a very surprising discovery that woke me up to just how valuable online research is! I’ll write a separate post about that discovery later.

First the good stuff! I was able to obtain marriage records for the following marriages:

• Helen Marie Spangler & Ira R. Robinson
• Irene Spangler & Marvin Bennett
• Robbie Spangler & Frank Jaynes
• Sybil Spangler & Ezra Tucker
• Eunice Spangler & George Winkle
• Verena Spangler & Elmer Shoulders
• Dora L. Spangler & Dewey Neal
• Ella Spangler & O. D. Ferguson
• Eli Gideon Spangler & Mary E. Hamilton
• H. J. Spangler & Alma Matherson

I was also able to find the birth dates and complete names for the following people:

• Nancy Ellen Spangler
• Dora Lee Spangler
• John Carl Spangler
• Cecil Lolo Spangler
• Charles Morris Spangler
• Lonnie Lawrence Spangler
• Raden William Ferguson
• Bonnie Ruth Ferguson
• Stella Mae Ferguson

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find anything on Martin Isaic Spangler. It’s like he just fell off the face of the earth sometime between 1910 and 1920! At least I know a little more about his descendants now!

I was also able to get new pictures of some tombstones and was surprised to find a couple that I didn’t expect to find.

I hung around until 12:00 when the Clarksville Public Library opened and was only there for an hour but was able to gain a tremendous amount of information from just 8 copied pages! Two were obituaries and the other six were pages from the Cemetery Records of Red River County. They had information about the deaths, some had obituaries, and some had birth and marriage information. For just $2.00 I was able to gain enough info to keep me busy for a while!

I think I spent $12.00 total for my copies of marriage records and copies from the library. I spent about $7.00 on lunch and probably about $10.00 on gas. For about $29.00 I was able to get so much information.

I’d called that successful, wouldn’t you?

The bad part is coming in my next post!

I just wanted to take a moment and thank all of you who have added me as a friend at Facebook. I know I don’t post much on “The Wall” and that I may not seem to do much on my page but I do go there! 

It’s been very interesting to be able to actually see different things about my fellow bloggers and, in a way, get to know you all better.

One added benefit of Facebook has been that I am now learning so much from the Unclaimed Persons group that was the main catalyst in my signing up for the service in the first place. I haven’t had an opportunity to help much in any of the researching of the cases yet because I have been working. It seems I only have time to help on the weekends. Watching how the others have gone about their research in finding the persons has helped me to learn a little more about how I can go about researching my relatives!

I’ve been posting a lot lately about my elusive great-uncle, Martin Isaic Spangler, and I believe that I have learned a lot just by reading the progress of the cases at Unclaimed Persons. I think that I may be able to use that info I have learned from the group to try to find a way to connect with a living relative of Martin’s.

You see, there are so many different tools available that we don’t realize could be used as genealogy research tools! Who’d have thought that Facebook would be helpful in my genealogy?

Have a great day everyone!

OK, the first part of this post everyone will figure out. After all, this is so “old school”!

So, what do you see above? That’s right, a black dot! Of course, I’m supposed to say “What about all the white space?” Well that brings me to the topic of this post. Do we all see everything the same?

I was puzzling about something on the way home tonight. Yesterday, when traveling back from Commerce, Texas to my home in Reno, Texas, I noticed an animal coming out of the woods toward the highway. At first I thought it was a fox but when we got closer I saw it was much more muscular and realized it was a bobcat! It stuck its head out of the tall grass and then proceeded to go back into the trees. When I said “Hey, wow, look at that!” all I got was a bunch of startled replies. No one else in the car saw this, only me!

It seems I always see things that others don’t see. Is it because I have just learned to pay attention to the little things when it comes to doing genealogy? Is it possible that sometimes when we are researching that we may have the answer right in front of us but we are busy looking elsewhere?

I guess the logic of what I am trying to say is that we sometimes need to just take the time to look around us. We become so busy trying to get all we can that we don’t take the time to appreciate what we have. I’ve been so busy in the last few weeks and I have realized that I have let all my little projects get set to the side. I am doing double research because I don’t have everything organized as I should. I need to just slow down and take the time to see just what I have and then I will be better prepared for the next step.

So, what do you see when you look around at your research? Are you in the same boat as I am? I hope that you are much more organized and are able to see so much farther into the future!

Have a great day everyone!

This is the death certificate for George Handford Hicks. It was obtained from Family Search Labs and is part of my research for my elusive great-uncle, Martin Isaic Spangler.

The one thing I learned in obtaining this death certificate and the previously posted one is that the informant’s name is given as Ella Robinson and on Stella’s the mother’s maiden name is given as Ella Robinson. That is not correct! The mother’s maiden name is Spangler. Since the mother is also the informant I can only assume she was using her married name, which gives me a hint that she remarried after the death of her husband in 1942!

There is still much more vital information to be obtained by these records. I now know where the burial location is and have put in a request for a picture of the tombstones at Find A Grave and those requests have already been claimed so perhaps I will have a little more when that comes around. There are also other things that I can learn which I will try to share with you later!

I just wanted to share the death certificates for Stella Ferguson and George Hicks with you. I had posted earlier about the posting of images from the Family Search Labs but as Ruth at Bluebonnet Country Genealogy put it, it’s all offered freely and so it shouldn’t be a problem. So here is the death certificate for Stella Mae (Ferguson) Hicks. It will help you to see how I am able to generate leads from the different sources I have been able to use in finding the descendants of my elusive great-uncle, Martin Isaic Spangler.