LOL No sooner do I post complaining about genealogogists than I decide to do some digging of my own. I got to talking with the wife of the corner store guy the other day and she urged me to find the records I'd need to apply for enrollment in the Cherokee Nation of Tahlequah. My grandmother's name is listed on the Dawes Roll and since the birth date listed jives with her age I figure it must be her (after doing many obituary lookups for people I know full well that many people have the same name and to find the obit you need to be looking for the right person).
My sister tried doing this once and gave up after getting copies of my father and grandmother's death records. Apparently we need those and their birth records. This is where it gets interesting. At this point I have no earthly idea where either birth will be recorded. They lived in Elmer, Oklahoma when Dad was born but apparently he was born in Texas. I don't have any hard info to go on, but I assume Minnie was born in Oklahoma but birth records for 1911 seem to be pretty sketchy. Who knows if a record even exists? I do know that she first applied for a Social Security card in Texas.
Another wrinkle: Minnie's husband Jessie was born in Arkansas but his birth was recorded in Texas. Plus all this time I thought he was Jesse David and now he turns out to be Jessie. And I cannot find him in the Social Security Death Index. Strange.
This reminds me of something the lawyer Mom and I saw last week about settling my other grandmother's estate said. People think they know their relatives but when you publish notices and sit out the required waiting periods before closing everything out, all sorts of things pop up that were kept well covered while the person was alive. One person supposedly had 10 heirs. It turned out to be over 50. In another of her cases the decedent was known to have had "a couple of fender benders." That "couple" became 22 before the estate was settled.
I now officially acknowledge that genealogy can actually be pretty interesting and I apologize for dissing its fans.
Ink Paper Words' Profile
- ~j~
- Pacific Northwest, United States
- In elementary school, I desperately wanted my mother to order books for me from those flyers Scholastic hands out to kids. She refused, citing the "perfectly good library down the street." I exacted revenge by becoming a card-carrying ALA accredited reference librarian. Ha! Take that!
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