Recently, I was in conversation with my brother regarding one of our mother’s paternal uncles.  He passed away in the ‘70’s but other than the Social Security Death Index, I had been unable to find additional information about his death. 

“I believe he died in ’77, Sis.”

“Well, I can’t find an obituary for him anywhere.”

“Did you look in the piano bench?”

MANY years ago, my paternal grandmother purchased a Lester spinet piano.  For whatever reason, the piano bench became the home NOT for sheet music, but rather the home for all manner of important papers. 

Chief among these important papers were (and STILL are!) obituaries which had been cut from newspapers and funeral order-of-services sheets. Both provide a wealth of information which can be investigated and possibly used to establish descendants and lineage. 

I have ventured into the piano bench on several occasions over the years, borrowing obits to scan and returning them promptly.  I had never seen one for our great uncle. 

Asking my mother about it during a telephone conversation, she replied, “It’s in there unless someone removed it.  Where else would it be?” 

Oh boy.

“I’ll look for it the next time I come home.”

Oh boy.

I hope it’s in there.

When researching a particular name, it is very important to consider all the possible spellings of that name.  I have seen my maiden name, Saddler, spelled with one‘d’, two‘d’s, a ‘u’ instead of an ‘a’, and without the ‘r’. Just those variations make over a half dozen different possible spellings to search.  You must think of phonetic variations when speculating about possible spellings.  Take into account accents and speech impediments.  While it can be tedious, it must be done.  Especially in brick wall situations. 

Once upon a search for my grandfather’s younger half-brother, I ran into such a situation.  

I was told that their father, Robert, had remarried and had perhaps changed his name from  “Saddler” to “Watson.” I was also told that Papa’s half-brother’s name was for-sure “Cecil Watson.”

Into the census records I dove.  I found a Cecil Watson in the 1930 census record for the county in which we understood great grandfather had settled after giving Papa away and abandoning his brother, Jesse (a story for another time).

The only problem with this Cecil was that he was living with only his mother, Bertha.  Where was Robert?  Bertha was listed as a widow.  Had Robert died?  Or was this the wrong Cecil?

Delving deeper into the census records, I could find no Cecil in the 1920 census index for the county, so I searched instead for Robert Watson and found Robert and “Bertia” married with a son.  Not Cecil, though.  It was some 35 year-old man named “Secther”.

Who in the world was Secther?  And how was he older than my Papa?  And how was his mother seven years younger than he?

None of it made any sense. 

In an effort to be sure I was reading the record correctly, I zoomed the page to the highest magnification and after my head stopped spinning, and I could focus again, I realized that the transcriber had made a mistake. 

The age wasn’t 35.  It was three.  A large “X” had been drawn over that area of the sheet, apparently with a dull pencil. The transcriber mistook the line going through Secther’s age box to be the number five and listed his age as 35 in the index. 

Back in the 1930 census record, Cecil’s age was listed as “14”.  “Secther” being three in 1920 with Bertia (Bertha) and Robert make him my guy, but why did they have him listed as Secther?  Was that his middle name?  Cecil Secther?  Or was it his given name?  Secther Cecil?  Say that five times fast!

Actually, say it over and over and you’ll realize that “Cecil” and “See-thur” is the same name.  The person giving the census taker the information, whether it was Robert or Bertha, may have had a speech impediment. 

You must think of phonetic variations.   Otherwise you could struggle with brick walls far longer than you want.

Sometimes, it just doesn't matter what historical records reflect.   People believe what they want to believe. 

As a child, I loved to hear my mother re-tell the stories her grandmother Maggie told her when she was a child.  Romantic and exciting stories.  I vividly remember two that my mother told me. 

Maggie recounted how her husband, "Mr. Washington" as she always called him, swept her off her feet when she was "but a strip of a girl".  She was living in Botetourt County, Virginia when she first met Washington Smith.  He was a transient, working on the railroad, "a fine figure of a man."  One day she gave him a drink of water, and the rest is history.  She married him when she was just 14 years old. 

Then there is the story Maggie told of her own childhood.  The one about how she and her family had to run from the Indians in the middle of the night in the dead of winter with only the clothes on their back.  Crossing half frozen streams and hiding under the curve of the creek banks until they were able to reach safety. 

Romantic and exciting stories.  

Twenty years later, I began to dabble in genealogy.  Online.  Dial-up.  Slooooow.  I didn't dabble consistently or seriously until the coming of cable internet.  It was soooo much faster!  Census records loaded in far less time than it took to brew a pot of coffee!  Yay!  The next thing I knew, I was writing away to obtain records, building my family tree with facts, and loving every minute of it.  I also began to read and study the history of the times and places I researched. 

Last year, while shaking Gramma Maggie's branch for the first time in several years, I read that the last Indian uprising in Virginia was in southwestern Virginia in 1794. 

Then I did the math:  if she had run from Indians, that would have made Maggie 191 years old when she died in 1985.  What the?!

Thinking that perhaps I had remembered the story incorrectly, perhaps it was Maggie's grandmother or great grandmother (?!), I asked my Mother about it when I went to visit her.  She recounted it exactly the way she had when I was a child. 

When I expressed doubt about whether it actually happened, she got a bit indignant and snapped, "Well THAT'S what she told us when we were kids!  I don't know why she would have LIED about something like that!" 

To which I hastily replied, "Oh, wait, maybe my math is off.  Oh. Hmm." 

To which she replied, "Probably."

Perhaps I should have used a different approach to tell my 80-year-old mother that her Gramma sold her a whopper--hook, line and sinker.  

Gramma Maggie had a hard life.  Born and raised moving from coal town to coal town, living in rickety shanties through most of her life, she never knew the finer things.  Although they were dirt-floor poor, she always managed to pinch off a dime out of the grocery money for a pot of rouge for her cheeks.  That dime came out of the ten dollars a month that Grampa Smith gave her to buy groceries.  For the six of them.  She had four children living at home in the 1940's--the time frame in which she told my mother the stories. 

Perhaps, looking around at her meager surroundings, smelling the eternal pot of beans cooking on the stove, she decided to have an adventure.  What harm could a story do?  Perhaps while relating the adventure, she saw something in a seven-year-old's eye.  Respect?  Reverence? Adoration? 

At that point it didn't matter what the historical record reflected. 

That which was reflected in my mother's eye was more important to Gramma Maggie.

People believe what they want to believe.

And so, we must never speak of this.