Tombstones in the News

The Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has recently featured a couple of interesting stories on local tombstone mysteries:

• Historical society fills gaps in story of veteran's death
• Civil War tombstone at center of mystery (with a follow-up:  Civil War mystery starts to unravel)

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: August 22, 2009

Every Saturday, Randy Seaver at Genea Musings writes a prompt or challenge known as "Saturday Night Genealogy Fun." This week's challenge:

1) Is there someone on your list of 16-great-great-grandparents that you don't have a census record for, and for which one should be available? If you have all of your great-great-grands (or they are not on the census records), what about your great-grands, your grands, or your parents? What about siblings of your great-grands? What about your spouse's family lines? Go find at least one!

2) Tell us about it in your blog, comments to this post, or comments in Facebook. While you're at it, give us a source citation for your census finding too (you do make source citations, don't you?).

Choosing somewhat at random, I decided to search for one of my husband's gg-grandmother's siblings, Ward JAMES. From earlier censuses, I knew that he was born around 1895, in Illinois, and I knew that by 1930, most of his family was in Brown County, South Dakota.

Using Footnote's limited time free access to the 1930 census, I quickly found Ward and his family living in Lansing Township, Brown County, South Dakota.


* Ward R. James - head, renter, owns a radio, lives on a farm, male, white, 35, married, first married at 28, did not attend school this year, can read and write, born Illinois, father born Illinois, mother born Illinois, able to speak and write English, Farmer, farm

* Ines E. James - wife, female, white, 25, married, first married at 18, did not attend school this year, can read and write, born Wisconsin, father born Wisconsin, mother born Wisconsin, occupation none

* Ivan W. James - son, male, white, 2, single, did not attend school this year, can not read and write, born South Dakota, father born Illinois, mother born Wisconsin, occupation none

1930 U.S. Federal Census, Lansing Township, Brown County, South Dakota, ED 7-37, Sheet 1a, Family 6, Ward R. James household, jpeg image, [Digital scan of original records in the National Archives, Washington, DC], subscription database, accessed August 2009.

I'd previously known nothing about Ward James as an adult, so I added his wife and child to my file today.

This was also a chance to check out the census on Footnote, and I was impressed. The search function seemed to work well, and I was glad to be able to lighten or darken the image myself.

I did a little more digging online and easily found when Ward, Inez, and Ivan passed away, as well as the name of Ivan's wife. It appears that she is likely still living.