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In the 1860 census, my third great-grandmother Margaret is married to Charles Littrell. They live in Salem Virginia with their two children, John and Mary Ellen.
The 1870 census reveals that Charles had recently married Julia McMasters. Their blended family included a two year old child of their own named Edward. By the 1880 census the family had moved to Springfield Ohio.
Margaret's identity seemed to be lost until one day a clue appeared on FamilySearch. A Margaret Jane Littrell who had been married to Chas. W. Littrell died in 1867. The Family History Library had two films that offered possibilities for me to explore; # 33822 with Marriage Licenses and a Marriage Register, and # 33823 with a birth and death register. I rented both.
I looked at the marriages first. It was frustrating not to be able to find Charles's marriage to Margaret. But I did locate his marriage to Julia on November 21, 1866. Both were widowed. Charles was 32, born in Roanoke County Virginia. Twenty-seven year old Julia had been born in Rockbridge County. Charles' parents are listed as John and Catherine. The Dunker minister who married the couple was John Brubaker.
The birth and death register revealed multiple birth records for children born to Charles and (variations of spellings for) Margaret Jane. Seeing my second great-grandmother's birth in 1858 proved Margaret Jane was indeed my third great-grandmother. The birth record of their first child included Margaret Jane's maiden name - Shartzer.
Sadly I learned Margaret's fate within minutes of learning her name. She and two of her young children died of flux in July of 1867.
The Littrell plot thickens. How could Charles and Julia be married before Margaret died? The answer could be as simple as an error in transcription, but this is a question I hope to answer during my next visit to the FHC.
Technology is amazing, isn't it? The information we desire can be ours with just a few clicks on the keyboard. Well, most of the time anyway.
Every time a human comes in contact with a record the chance for error is increased. The person listening to a name misspells it, the person transcribing the record misreads it, the person indexing the transcription mistypes it and so on. Computers, as wonderful as they are, are limited in the logic they can find in illogical files. There are many research situations in which the only way to move forward is to step back.
Some surnames can be spelled in such a variety of ways, that no matter how creatively we search the index, it's nowhere to be found. Trying every imaginable spelling only takes us as far as OUR imagination. Perhaps the person inputting the information was even more imaginative.
Looking at a list of names with our human eyes allows us to make connections a computer can't make. Recently we found an obituary for the surname ICE. In the newspaper the name had been written ISE. Analyzing the clues contained in the record verified this was the correct person. A simple mistake.
Mildred Bjorn was mentioned in another obituary. You might think her surname is a candidate for errors, but it was her given name that was the stumbling block. It was indexed as Meldrett. The Swedish accent of the child's mother and the intake clerk's phonetic spelling combined to make this creative record challenging to locate.
The search capabilites of newspaper subscription sites are amazing. I have located many ancestors this way. But when the publication isn't available online or the computer search comes up blank, it's time to head for a good old-fashioned microfilm reader.
