I have spent the past week scrolling through census pages, trying - unsuccessfully - to find my great-grandmother. Because once my great-grandfather died, in 1923, I couldn't find anything until she died. It was driving me nuts. I *knew* she had to be there. I mean, where would she have gone?
Today, I found the answer. It turns out that she got married again. Mind you, she went back to Palmer, evidently, after her second husband died because that is the name on the Social Security Death Index and the name on her tombstone. So you can forgive me for being confused and thinking that I had not found the right Lena.
To further complicate matters, her daughter, my Auntie Helen, married her second husband's oldest son. So I was confused when I saw my great-aunt, under her married name, but listed as stepdaughter to the head of the house. Again, I thought it was just a coincidence. But when you combine the "coincidence" of the wife of the head being Lena P and there also being stepchildren with the names of my great-aunt and two great-uncles (my grandfather had gotten married two years earlier), the lightbulb finally went on over my head and I realized that I had, in fact, found those missing Palmers. And that the reason I couldn't find them previously was because they were on the 1930 census as Williamsons.
I have likewise been unable to find them in the 1925 Iowa census. So now I will go back and look for them under Williamson and see if, perhaps, they are there after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment