{"id":48181,"date":"2019-02-21T11:27:07","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T16:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=48181"},"modified":"2019-02-21T11:27:28","modified_gmt":"2019-02-21T16:27:28","slug":"searching-on-the-mothers-name-got-me-the-daughters-obituary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/searching-on-the-mothers-name-got-me-the-daughters-obituary.html","title":{"rendered":"Searching on the Mother\u2019s Name Got Me the Daughter\u2019s Obituary"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was having trouble finding information on my cousin Frances L. Henderson, born about 1909 in Paulding County, Georgia.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t finding her obituary.
\nIt could be that she had married, and therefore had a different surname.<\/p>\n

It should be simple \u2013 but I couldn\u2019t find a record that she married.
\nSo, I looked for her in the census. I didn\u2019t find her. She must have married and therefore had a different surname.<\/p>\n

Next, I searched for her parents to see if their records gave me a clue.<\/p>\n

That worked.<\/p>\n

I found the 1940 census record for her mother, Louella Henderson, which listed Frances as living with her parents under the name Frances Matthews \u2013 and she had a son.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
Source: GenealogyBank, \u201cUnited States Census, 1940,\u201d database with images, GenealogyBank (https:\/\/genealogybank.com\/#), Louella Henderson, Dallas, Militia District 1080, Paulding, Georgia, United States. (Original index: United States Census, 1940, FamilySearch, 2014)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The census record also said that Frances was widowed.<\/p>\n

Continuing to search on the mother\u2019s name, I then found France\u2019s obituary.<\/p>\n

She was listed as \u201cMrs. Fannie Pearson\u201d when she died at the age of 99 in 2008 \u2013 she had remarried. I wouldn\u2019t have known to search for Frances L. Henderson under the name of \u201cMrs. Fannie Pearson,\u201d but because her obituary listed her mother, I was able to find her.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Source: GenealogyBank, Times Georgian (Carrollton, Georgia), 26 July 2008<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That was the key.
\nThe obituary gave me her full date and place of birth, and her date of death. Critically, it gave me the full names of her two husbands and the full name of her son. He had been listed as \u201cErnest Matthews\u201d in the 1940 census, but per the obituary his name was \u201cCharles Ernest Matthews, Jr.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knowing both of her married names allowed me to dig for additional information about Frances.<\/p>\n

When I began my search, I knew that her name was Frances and that she was born about 1909 in Paulding County, Georgia. Now, thanks to the census and obituary records, I had the rest of her story.<\/p>\n

With this information I can more accurately fill in the details of my family tree and continue looking for additional clues and details.<\/p>\n

It is critical to be flexible in your search terms.
\nSearching for her name was not getting me the results I needed \u2013 by switching to looking for records on her mother, I was able to find the records I needed about Frances and get a more accurate picture of my family tree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article by Thomas Jay Kemp about finding his cousin Frances L. Henderson\u2019s obituary by searching on her mother\u2019s name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12713],"tags":[6976,12,2719,2020,1084],"class_list":["post-48181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genealogy-research-tips","tag-census-records","tag-genealogy","tag-genealogy-search-tips","tag-newspaper-archives","tag-obituaries"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/photo-0810-2016-cemetery-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}