Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 26 Dec 2015.<\/p>\n
Okay – here we go again! \u00a0I found the missing information in a place that that was not anywhere close to where the ancestor had\u00a0lived but ironically, was only 5 minutes from where I work.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Earlier this month I blogged about the importance of revisiting places previously checked as sometimes the needed information becomes available due to persistence.\u00a0 You can read that blog here \u2013 Why Persistence Pays in Hunting Records<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n That blog was about my difficulty in obtaining a death records for my husband\u2019s maternal great grandmother, Louise Carlson Johnson.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>I had a death year (1937) given to me by his mother but no proof of death.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Previously, I had written to Lake County, Indiana where I assumed she had died, for a death certificate.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>They told me they didn\u2019t have one.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>I then contacted the Gary Health Department thinking they may have some record but they said they had nothing on Louise.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>I contacted both hospitals in existence in Gary at the time of her death \u2013 Methodist Hospital (the Protestant hospital) and Mary Mercy (the Roman Catholic Hospital) but they couldn\u2019t help me.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>I checked both hospitals because many of our Protestant relatives used Mercy Hospital as they had a very good staff back in the day.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>And seriously, when you\u2019re in pain who cares who helps you!<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n After discovering that Louise was buried in Ridgelawn Cemetery in Lake County, Indiana I decided to write to Indianapolis (for my non US readers \u2013 that\u2019s the capitol of Indiana) to see if they had the death record.\u00a0 Maybe it had been sent from the local to the state level. \u00a0I received the response via snail mail on December 22\u2013 no record found.\u00a0 Geez!<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The cemetery didn\u2019t seem to be the kind of place that makes any exception to rules (see Ashes on the Doorstep<\/a> for those places that do!) so I believe the death certificate was presented for burial.\u00a0 With that thought in mind I decided there was only two reasons that there was no death certificate in Lake County:\u00a0 1) she had remarried and her name was no longer Johnson or 2) she died somewhere besides Lake County.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I checked Ancestry.com for City Directory information for Gary for 1937 and found her residing with one of her married daughters.\u00a0 Her name was still Johnson and she was listed as a widow.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t exactly sure when the City Directory was published but the chance of her marrying in the few months after it was published and before her death was remote as she had been a widow for 31 years.\u00a0 That meant she must have died out of the county.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Louise had 3 children \u2013 all married in 1937.\u00a0 She resided with daughter Elsie in Gary.\u00a0 Daughter Ruth lived nearby.\u00a0 Daughter Helen, however, was living in Porter County \u2013 the county next to Lake.\u00a0 Louise also had 10 step children and although I\u2019ve been unable to trace many of them, some were also living in Porter County.\u00a0 From letters that I have it didn\u2019t appear that Louise was close to most of the step children but the possibility existed that she may have been visiting one when she passed away.\u00a0 Porter County seemed the most viable place to look.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Searching online I could find no database for Porter County deaths.\u00a0 I had previously checked newspaper archives for the Vidette Messenger, the Valparaiso (Porter County seat) newspaper but found no obituary.\u00a0 I had also checked for an obituary in the Gary paper, The Post Tribune, previously but was unable to find a paper from that year as the paper had been sold a number of times and some years are missing in the archives.\u00a0 Of course, 1937 was one of those years!<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n I went to familysearch.org to check their catalog and discovered a book that might be helpful – <\/span>Index to death records, Porter County, Indiana, 1931-1959<\/u>.\u00a0 <\/span>Right place, right years \u2013 could be helpful.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Checked Worldcat and found a copy locally so Wednesday morning I called the Genealogy Department at the Tampa Public Library and David not only found the book on the shelf, he did a lookup for me.\u00a0 Happy Holiday to me! \u00a0Sure enough, Louise Johnson was listed in May 1937.\u00a0 Now I know where I can write for the death certificate!\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Louise is the only recent relative that I don\u2019t have parent information for so hopefully, the death certificate will give me a clue or two.\u00a0 Also, her dna is very interesting so I\u2019d really like to find out more about her line.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Due to holiday closures David volunteered to scan and email the page to me. \u00a0I attached it to the death certificate request to expedite it.\u00a0 Like the song says, \u201cwaiting is the hardest part!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n After I put the death certificate request in the mail I decided to just recheck newspaper archives and what wonders did I behold! \u00a0Some kind folks have entered the obituary information for the Gary Post Tribune and now 1937 is available! \u00a0I immediately requested a librarian to look it up. \u00a0Keeping my fingers crossed that my youngest brick wall is about to be scaled. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 26 Dec 2015. Okay – here we go again! \u00a0I found the missing information in a place that that was not anywhere close to where the ancestor had\u00a0lived but ironically, was only 5 minutes from where I work.\u00a0 Earlier this month I blogged about the importance of revisiting places previously … Continue reading “Another Find Where It Shouldn’t Have Been!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[230,195,229,209],"class_list":["post-242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brick-walls","tag-city-directory","tag-harbaugh","tag-obituary","tag-persistence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":243,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions\/243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}