Wednesday, August 22, 2018

A Maiden Name for Veldora (--?--) Seaver (1857-1926)

I seem to do a lot of random research some days - mainly because it is fun - the hunt, you know.  But I do it with a purpose - to add names, dates, places, content to persons in my RootsMagic family tree (and by extension then the FamilySearch Family Tree, my Ancestry Member Tree, and other online trees).

Today, I found Veldora (--?--) Seaver (1857-1926) in my family tree - I probably added her from a census record long ago.  I didn't have any Ancestry Hints for her.  She's probably been in my tree for ten years or more.  I wondered what her maiden name was.  So I went hunting.

1)  Here is the Family View in my RootsMagic tree before I went hunting:


I searched on Ancestry.com for "vel* seaver" born 1857 in New York, with everything not exact.  I received a list of 6 results on the "Records" list:


The most intriguing result was the Pennsylvania Death Certificate record for "Veldora Dearen":


I eagerly clicked on the image and saw:


I would have indexed the record as Veldora Seaver.  Look at the signature of the informant!

There is a birth date - May 10, 1857 in New York State.  There is a death date - 11 Nov 1926 in Emporium, Cameron County, Pennsylvania.  There are parents listed -- David and Eleanor (Hauber) Hamilton.

Bingo - I hit the jackpot.  Yes, I know that the birth information is not Primary Information, but it is an Original Source for the death information.  The birth date and place, and parents names, are supported by other records also.

Now i'm wondering who the informant, D.F. Seaver, is?  Is it a child of George O. and Veldora (Hamilton) Seaver?  Or a brother or uncle or cousin of George O. Seaver.  I need to do more work.  The tree is never done!

Update:  I found a son, David Floyd Seaver, in census and draft registration records.  And another son, Hamilton Hauber Seaver, who died during World War I.

There are six different record collections on that Ancestry search result list, and there are six different names on those six records.  But they all apply to Veldora (Hamilton) Seaver (1857-1926).  Ancestry.com still does the best job of finding records for a person even when the name is misspelled or, in the death certificate above, misindexed.

Now the George O. Seaver family view doesn't look so barren:


I need to work on George next - I wonder what his middle name is?

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Copyright (c) 2018, Randall J. Seaver

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1 comment:

Marian B. Wood said...

As always, I really appreciate reading about the process you followed to search for Veldora's maiden name. Agree with you--Veldora's signature is very clear and should have been indexed correctly from the start!