Beyond Fiction

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.

I just wanted to post that today was actually a fun day for a change. I’m usually just laid back and do nothing on Sundays. Today was different.

Yesterday, I ended a 34 hour marathon of no sleep with a crash time of 10 hours! It was a terrible day, even though the last part was cool because I spent some time with my brother and his family. Those brats were good!

Today, I finished toying with the Texas Deaths, 1890-1976, for now, and also added a few more friends on Facebook. I then went outside to mow. Having a riding lawn mower is very nice. I finished all but the front yard and then I took time to show my youngest daughter how to drive the lawn mower. She really enjoyed it. I then let her finish the front yard. I let my 16 year old daughter try it and she was not that impressed. I think she’s just ready to drive the car!

My oldest daughter and I went to the cemetery and took some pictures for Find A Grave and then went looking for tomatoes!

Now, we are cooking some burgers and such on the grill, we actually found some tomatoes (recall in Texas) that were homegrown and really big, nice slicers for a decent price and they were just right behind our house! Now we are ready to eat and watch National Treasure 2, Book Of Secrets and have a good evening with my wife, daughters and mother-in-law. That’s right, I’m being nice to mother-in-law for a change.

Let’s hope the rest of the day goes as well as it has so far!

Today, I was reading some of my favorite blogs and noticed that a few folks had posted some of the death certificates from the Family Search Labs. I’m very excited about theses databases, especially the Texas Deaths, 1890-1976.

I’m just curious though. Does anyone remember the Ancestry fiasco last year? You know, folks were posting images from Ancestry and they threatened them, blah, blah, blah! I understand that Ancestry is a pay-site and that cut into their profits or whatever. How does that work with Family Search? I mean, it’s a free database so would it be wrong to post these images?

I am simply trying my best to avoid any harassing emails. What do you all feel on this subject? Post your comments and let me know. (This is also a chance to see if anyone is actually reading this stuff.)

In doing my research on my elusive Martin Isaic Spangler, I discovered that the death date for Stella (Ferguson) Hicks and her husband, George Hicks were both the same. I was intrigued and thought it would be worth investigating. Was it a fire, an act of nature such as a tornado or flood, or what exactly was it that would cause both of them to die on the same day? Unfortunately, it was nothing like that! In the end, it is a very sad story and will be detailed in the 2 newspaper articles that will follow this obituary.

The following obituary was found using the Historical Newspaper Collection at Ancestry. I’ve once again chosen to transcribe this information instead of posting the image to avoid any conflicts. It is taken from The Brownsville Herald, December 19, 1950 edition.

Joint funeral services for George Hicks, 44, and his wife, Mrs. Stella May Hicks, 37, will be held at 2 p.m. Wednesday at the Kreidler-Ashcraft Funeral Home.

Services will be conducted by the Salvation Army, and burial will be in the Combes Cemetery.

Bodies of Mr. And Mrs. Hicks were found in their bedroom Monday morning. A verdict of murder and suicide was returned by Justice of the Peace A. H. Markowsky.

The last paragraph was very stunning to me. Murder and suicide. What?

This obituary was just very basic information. The one thing I was able to do was find the burial information from this posting. I was also able to see which funeral home handled the burial and when the services were performed. There will be more discovered in the 2 articles that will follow.

Have any of my readers ever experienced this? How sad when you are discovering your family history and then run across something such as this. I know it happens very often but it is just such a sad story when you discover it!

I just wanted to post that it seems the Texas Deaths, 1890-1976 database at Family Search Labs is back and it is back with a vengeance!

It had disappeared for a few days and I was worried that it was not going to come back but it is back and how! It now has a very nice feature. You can look up the record and also get a copy of the original image! I’m not sure that the feature is available for all records but for the ones I have looked up it has been.

How great is that? The original death certificate with all the information you might want, right there for the taking! I love it!

Thanks, Family Search!

James E. Ferguson was the son of Oliver D. Ferguson and Ella Spangler. He is the grandson of Martin Isaic Spangler. This obituary is transcribed from The Brownsville Herald, Sunday, December 16, 1934 edition. This article was obtained from the Historical Newspaper Collection at Ancestry.

Funeral services were held from the Stotler-Burdette chapel Friday afternoon for James Ferguson, 11, son of Mr. and Mrs. O. D. Ferguson, formerly of Primera. Interment following the services conducted by Rev. Grace Kirkland of the Assembly of God, took place at Combes.

Pallbearers were Masters Louis Holmes, Gerald Nale, Bernardo Garcia and Alton Collingsworth. The child is survived by his parents, three sisters, Marie, Ruth, and Beatrice, and two brothers, Ray and Billy.

It’s short and sweet and gives no details as to what was the cause of death or any other circumstances. It is, however, helpful in finding information to confirm the children of Oliver and Ella. I had obtained the information from the 1930 U. S. Census to collect the names of their children but this helps to narrow the names down a little more. In the 1930 census the names were given as Stella M. (missing?), Radon W., Ruth B., Lois M., James E., Fannie B., and Billie H. By reading this obituary I can probably conclude that Radon W. is Ray, Ruth B. is Ruth, Lois M. is Marie, Fannie B. is Beatrice and Billie H. is Billy. This will become very helpful in future research.

There is one interesting bit of information missing from this obituary. His oldest sister, Stella, is not mentioned in the obituary. This is unusual but perhaps not that amazing. Stella, at this time, is married and has 3 children of her own. It’s just one of those things that makes you wonder why!

It’s sad to see such a young death. 11 years old. I am still searching to see if I can find what actually happened to James but unfortunately there is a gap of about a week in the newspaper listings and that is probably where the information I need would be! Perhaps I can find more in the Harlingen newspaper.

Can you see how I am trying to take this research? Here a little, there a little and eventually you can have a pretty good little lineage going!

I’ll add the obituary of George and Stella next!

I’m enjoying writing this series about my “Elusive” ancestors. Strangely, it seems that my writing of these posts is motivating me and helping me to find more info about the “elusive” person!

Today, I’d like to share what I have found. I mentioned in my last post that I had made great strides in finding some of Martin’s descendants. I feel confident that I am getting closer to the point where I may be able to make contact with a living descendant and perhaps discover some much needed information about my great-uncle! It’s one thing to find names and places and such but I have been fortunate to find more than that. I’ve actually been able to find some stories and some obituaries lately. Of course, sometimes we are surprised by what we find and sometimes we are even saddened!

I must say that I have found the Historical Newspaper Collection on Ancestry to be very helpful to me in this endeavor. It isn’t always feasible to use this collection because a lot of the places my ancestors have been are not covered by this collection. This was one of the rare exceptions. Martin’s granddaughter, Stella (Ferguson) Hicks, and her family lived in the Brownsville, Texas area and also in the San Antonio, Texas area. Ancestry’s newspaper collection was very valuable because they had the local newspapers for this area. Here is a list of some of the items I found and will share with you all in the next few posts:

• Obituary for James E. Ferguson, Martin’s grandson.
• Obituary for George Hicks and Stella (Ferguson) Hicks
• Newspaper article concerning George and Stella (Ferguson) Hicks
• Newspaper article concerning Billy Ferguson and Kenneth Hicks (son of George and Stella)
• Another newspaper article concerning George and Stella (Ferguson) Hicks

As I said, the obituaries were able to give me some helpful information about family members. The other articles are the kind that when you see them you just have to say “Wow!” The thing about researching your family history is that you have to take the good with the bad and in this case there are a couple of very sad articles.

I won’t post the actual images of the articles because I don’t want to get into any kind of trouble. You remember all the uproar last year, right? Instead I will transcribe them and share them with you. For that reason it may be slow coming but it will come eventually.

I hope you will enjoy my sharing them with you!

Well, it finally happened. I have taken the plunge and started an account at Facebook!

I’ve been content with my MySpace page for it seems like forever and I will continue with that but I believe that my new venture will be very exciting. I was reading a post yesterday about the Unclaimed Persons by Megan at Roots Television. She talked about creating a group at Facebook and I was really intrigued by the ideas put forth in this blog.

Well, to make a long story short, I decided to join Facebook and the Unclaimed Persons group and while doing so I discovered that there are a lot of Genea-bloggers that are on Facebook. So, I decided it would be cool to have my MySpace account for my real family and my Facebook account for my second family, my fellow genealogists and bloggers.

I plan on trying to explore it more this weekend but I hope none of you will be offended if I ask you to be my “Friend” on Facebook. I’m excited to have an opportunity to get to interact some with all the other bloggers who I respect and admire so much! I’ve already been able to add Randy Seaver and Miriam Robbins Midkiff so I’m off to a wonderful start!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!