Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Found Death Record of a Cousin on MyHeritage

The only thing I knew about my second cousin, twice removed named Gean Woodward, son of Charles Woodward and Nellie Bell Redfield, was that he was born in about 1884 in Belleville, Kansas.  The only information I had of his existence was my great-grandmother's list of descendants of her grandparents, Samuel and Mary Ann (Underhill) Vaux.  He was in no known census record, and I've found no vital record for birth, marriage or death.

I don't know much about Charles Woodward or Nellie Bell (Redfield) Woodward either.

This afternoon, I thought "I wonder if Charles Woodward was mentioned in the Belleville, Kansas newspapers?"  I knew that the newspaper was in the NewspaperARCHIVE collection on MyHeritage.

So I searched for Charles Woodward in the Newspaper collection on MyHeritage, limiting my search to Kansas and 1890 plus or minus 20 years.  There were 80 matches.

Near the top of the list was this article, in the "Died" section of the Belleville [Kansas} Republic County Freeman newspaper dated 21 November 1895, on page 5 of 8:


The transcription of the article is:

DIED
At Topeka Kns. Nov. 13th, of blood poisoning, resulting from diptheria with which disease he was stricken about Oct. 1st, Eugene Woodward aged 11 years and 11 months.  The little fellow's mother died 4 years ago this month and his father brought him and his two sisters here to live with his grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. F.N. Munger, where he stayed until this summer when he went to live with his father at Topeka.  His death was very touching as he was conscious to the last and just a short time before he died he made quite a talk upon his future home and picked out hymns to be sang and said the Lord's Prayer.  All those present were greatly moved at the little ones words.  His remains were brought up at 4 o'clock on Friday morning and deposited immediately at the cemetery beside his mother.  The little fellow was a great favorite with all who knew him as he was a bright wide awake boy and cheerful at all times.  Mr. Charles Woodward, his father, accompanied his remains to this place."

The source citation for this article is (using the "Newspapers, Online Images" source template in RootsMagic):

"DIED," Belleville Republic County [Kansas] Freeman, 21 November 1895, page 5, column 5, Eugene Woodward death notice; online image, MyHeritage (http://www.MyHeritage.com : accessed 29 September 2015), NewspaperARCHIVE collection.

Now I know when Gean died, and that he was probably born in late 1883, and that his mother died in about 1891, according to this article.

I wonder if there are more articles for Charles, Nellie and their two daughters, Ada and Nellie.  I have 73 more matches to check on MyHeritage!

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/09/found-death-record-of-cousin-on.html

Copyright (c) 2015, Randall J. Seaver


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4 comments:

Michigan Girl said...

Great discovery Randy. It's difficult to know just where we will find information. I never cease to be surprised.

Agonzaleswithans said...

Great find! And you find out so much more about the family than just a death date. And, a sad story too. What a great way to memorialize a little boy.

Agonzaleswithans said...

Great find! And you find out so much more about the family than just a death date. And, a sad story too. What a great way to memorialize a little boy.

T said...

How do you decide which subscriptions to pay? There are so many and at $200 a crack, I can't pay them all.