She did not appear out of nowhere. When I finally located her brother’s place of birth and was able to obtain German records on the family I discovered why I had difficulty finding her. 

She had a husband before she emigrated from Germany to the United States. They were married at least twelve years and had five children who survived to adulthood. She immigrated as a widow with her brothers and they spent a few years in Kentucky where she married Mr. Kraft.  Her children were grown before she moved to Illinois. She is not listed with any of them in any census record.

Until I found the first husband all those children were hiding under his name. Don’t assume that the long-term spouse someone has at death is the only spouse they had.

It’s a genealogy chart of the descendants of Rudolph and Tetjie Catherine (Heidan) Johnson, 19th century natives of Germany who had many family members immigrate to Illinois and Nebraska. What I have is an apparent photocopy of the original which was compiled by someone unknown to me and was found in my maternal grandparents’ collection of paper ephemera upon their death. It was not in my grandparents’ handwriting. I am using it as an initial outline to assist me in researching these families. While it could contain errors, I do want to cite it as a source–so that later I know when information came from this chart and when it came from somewhere else.

Determining how to cite this item has been a slight challenge.

For those who are intimidated by creating a citation, describing the item first is an excellent idea.

This photocopied chart of the family of Rudolf and Tetjie (Heidan) Johnson was found in the personal materials of John and Dorothy Ufkes. It was compiled by an unknown person and is now in the possession of their grandson, Michael Neill. It is not known how the Ufkeses acquired the chart nor how reliable the information contained in the chart is.

I could also include the town of residence for all individuals who had the chart in their possession at one time or another.

Is that in citation format? No. Does it include all the information needed to create a citation? Yes. Is it the end of the world if you don’t phrase it in citation format? No.

A first reference note could be something like:

Rudolf and Tetjie (Heidan) Johnson family descendant chart, John and Dorothy (Habben) Ufkes personal papers; privately held by Michael Neill [address for private use], 2023. There is no known provenance of the chart before it was in the Ufkes’ possession and the compiler (and accuracy of information contained therein) is currently unknown.

I would include data from the chart in my genealogical database–I just need to cite it so that later I know where those specific pieces of information came from.

Additionally I should use the information in the chart as a guide to perform further research on the family.

For US Census records, instructions to all federal census enumerations can be found on the census.gov website.

Keep in mind the very real possibility that your ancestor had no tombstone. This reasonably fresh grave doesn’t even have a temporary marker as many do.

The takeaway here is that your ancestor may have been buried sans tombstone. They may have been cremated and their remains scattered in an unknown location.

Or if they had a stone, it may have deteriorated beyond repair–always search for a book of transcriptions done in the past in case the stone was extant when they were done.

No stone decreases the chance they are located in FindAGrave.

The cemetery may have records–if you know where they were buried. Death certificates, funeral notices, death notices, obituaries, church records, family knowledge, or other sources may also indicate where a person is buried.

Because after the guardianship was closed, the issue might have been moot.

If you have easy access to another copy of the book, it may be worth your while to take a look. You never know what you may find written inside. 

The example image does not include anything earth shattering, but you never know until you look. ​

The 1940 US census indicates who in the household provided the information by placing an “x” within a circle next to that person’s name. If a household member did not provide the information, there was to be a notation in the left hand margin indicating who provided the information. This is the only US census that provided specific informant information.

And sometimes DNA and other information will cause us to re-evaluate what we thought was true even when we had a number of records and completely analyzed them.

My children’s great-great-grandfather (father of their great-grandmother) has morphed through many iterations over the nearly thirty years that I have researched him–always because I have located new information:

• a Greek immigrant to Chicago, Illinois, born in the 1880s–turned out he was the great-great-grandmother’s second husband and not the biological father of any of her children;
• a man born in Chicago in the 1880s (first husband of the great-great-grandmother) who was the son of English immigrants to Chicago in the 1860s–turned out the English couple adopted him as a child when his parents died young;
• the man born in Chicago in the 1880s wasn’t actually the son of that couple who died young–he had been adopted by them shortly after his birth to unknown parents;
• DNA indicated that the the man born in Chicago in the 1880s was not the biological father of the great-grandmother.

And so it goes. Don’t be afraid to admit you were wrong, but not every research problem is quite as convoluted as this family is (our post here only scratches the surface). It can happen to all of us. Just use as many records as you can, transcribe them as they are written, and adequately cite them.

It’s a great way to broaden your understanding of records for those times when you don’t have all the names and relationships at your disposal.

And sometimes when you “redo” a “done family,” you realize that it wasn’t as done as you thought it was.

The 1928 death certificate for Belle M. Tinsley of Popular Bluff, Missouri, indicated she was fifty years of age at the time of her death. While there are blanks on the certificate to provide for more age precision (months and days), those details were not listed on the death certificate.

Belle could very well have been fifty years of age when she died in March of 1928. It is remotely possible that she died on her birthday. The more likely scenario is that the listed age of fifty was an estimate. Ages ending in a “0” are more likely to have been a guess on the part of the informant. It’s very possible that the informant indicated the deceased was “around fifty” and that was entered solely as fifty on the death certificate.