Missing Persons

How many times has someone told you "It's all been done before; there's nothing left to do"? Or they say something like "I don't know; my mom/grandma/aunt/uncle/cousin has done it all." I always try to tell them to ask who ever is doing it. You never know when a new set of eyes will spot a missing person.

After getting a subscription to Ancestry.com, I decided to start documenting my ancestors. I would take a family and follow them backwards through the censuses for starters. I wanted to be sure all the families were complete. That is where I stumbled on to my first missing person: 1900 Census - mother of how many children - 3/number living - 2. Wait, who is the third one? Of course, it would be the 1900 Census with the 20 year record gap to the 1880. The 1880 only shows the young couple and child number 1 (or is she number 2?). I continued on for a while looking up other Federal Censuses for that and other families. Still I wondered, who was this missing child?

A few months later, I was going over a Family History compilation from a family reunion. One of the things included were obituaries of various family members including the mother of the missing child. There it stated that mother had been preceded in death by Addie who had died at age 6 of scarlet fever. I knew the name. And I could eliminate the possibility of Addie being the oldest. She didn't show in 1880 and the couple were only two years married with a one year old. It narrowed down her possible time frame to 1880 (after the census) to 1884. It was possible that Addie was the twin of the second (third?) child.

No more luck until the State Censuses came on line at Ancestry.com. Iowa State Census for 1885 provided the last link. There she was: Addie, born 1884 in Mills County, Iowa. Her birth date I found on the USGenWeb, Iowa GenWeb, Mills County extracted birth records. I still need to confirm the validity of this but I have filled in the blanks. Now I just need to confirm death information.