Research Wish List

Several cousins have offered recently to search for information for us the next time they travel to some area of common interest. Here's a list of lookups, searches and other projects which any of you can undertake the next time you're in certain areas.

The newspaper articles which appeared at the time of a person's death or marriage often contain an incredible quantity of information about them and their family. (However, we understand that it wasn't until about 1880 that newspapers began to print the kind of lengthy obituary you'll see here and there in this Family Album.) If you have enough time to go to a library and enough patience to deal with those temperamental microfilm readers, you can find a treasure trove of information on your ancestors and ours.

If you have a chance to go to the cemeteries where our ancestors are buried, be sure to take pictures of their grave markers. (See our Heddings chapel page for an example of some excellent photography.) Don't be too disappointed if you can't read the inscriptions in your photos. Our eyes can pick out the carvings on an old tombstone much better than any camera! Be sure to jot down the information on the stones and note any family members who might be buried nearby.

• Colorado.
  • Denver County.
    • Ben Inman (Jeanette's great-grandfather) died on New Year's Day, 1917, in Denver. Is there an obituary? Where is he buried?
    • Ben's wife, Lucy (Jennings) Inman, died 19 Jan 1947 in Denver. Same questions about her!
    • McConnell Langton (Jeanette's grandfather) died 7 Aug 1904, also in Denver. He is buried at Riverside cemetery. Is there an obituary?
  • El Paso County.
    • Mack Langton married Ben Inman's daughter Ida Mae Inman 15 Nov 1899 in Colorado Springs. Is there an article in a local paper?
• Indiana.
  • Marion County.
    • George A. E. Carey was a surgeon in the Union Army during the Civil War. He should have an interesting obituary. He died in Indianapolis 11 Oct 1910, but is buried with his parents and children at Forest Hill cemetery, Piqua, OH. (See Miami county, OH, below.) He could have an obituary in either place.
  • Monroe County.
    • Chuck's g-g-g-grandfather, Austin Seward, was one of the pioneer settlers of Bloomington. He founded a business which lasted more than 150 years. Yet, according to a Monroe county librarian:

      I checked our microfilm for an obituary for Austin Seward. The only newspaper we have for 1872 is the Bloomington Republican which was a weekly. I checked two weeks and found no mention of Mr. Seward's death.

      It's hard to imagine that his death on 27 Oct 1872 wasn't the occasion for any kind of remembrance in a local newspaper. Could there be other documents available from 1872 which mentioned his passing? Was there any mention of the death of his wife, Jannett "Jane" (Irvin) Seward, on 15 Aug 1865?
    • Chuck's grandmother's younger brother, Fred Seward, died in Bloomington on Christmas day, 1967. We don't have an obituary for him.
• Ohio.
  • Logan County.
    • Chuck's great-grandmother's second husband, David D. Yoder, died in West Liberty in July or August 1922 and is buried in Alexandria cemetery. Was there an obituary? Try the Bellefontaine Examiner if there isn't any West Liberty newspaper.
  • Miami County.
    • We located obituaries for Chuck's g-g-grandparents in the Piqua Helmet newspaper, but this is still an area where much family history is waiting to be discovered.
  • Montgomery County.
    • Chuck's grandparents, Sam Carey and Kate Plank, were married in Dayton 25 Mar 1906. Sam was from Urbana, in Champaign county, and Kate came from West Liberty, in Logan county. We're not sure why they chose Dayton. Did they elope? Could there be a story of their wedding in a newspaper in one of these three counties?
• WINANS RESEARCH. We'll list here two possible sources of an enormous amount of information on our Winans line. If you can spare a week or two to shuffle through old research papers, you might make some real discoveries:
  • Major Ira Winans left behind five boxes of his family history research at the Rochester, NY, public library. Is there anything there which isn't included in Mrs. Egy's book?
  • Professor Samuel Ross Winans' twelve boxes of papers are available at the New Jersey Historical Society in Newark, NJ.

Thanks in advance for any help you might give us. Can we look up somebody or something for you in Southern California. Let us know!