When ancestors “disappear” from records after they’ve reached a certain age, it usually is suggested that if they “didn’t die where they were supposed to,” that one look for them living near or with one of their adult grown children.
Several of my ancestors who “disappeared” were actually living near one of their children after their “disappearance.” Melinda Newman and her husband were living in White County, Indiana, after their children had left for other states. When I could not find Melinda after her husband’s 1861 death, it was because she had moved to Linn County, Iowa, to be near several of her grown children.
But….
Not everyone does that. Melinda’s own son, William Newman, did not. After his children had all left the nest, William and his wife moved to Macon County, Missouri, several counties away from where one of his daughters lived.
Not every ancestor follows the rules.
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4 Responses
My grandmother’s father moved from child to child so you never knew where he was living when. She told me this after I stumbled across his death in Nebraska when he had lived in Jefferson City, Missouri. His wife died and he lost the house during the depression so he moved from child to child. My mother remembered him living with them for awhile.
I have a great Aunt Eva Jeffery who homesteaded in Yankton, SD Terr. She lived next to her sister’s. The sister married a DeVoe and all the DeVoe’s in this family homesteaded in Yankton. After the turn of the century they all up and moved to Washington state. Eva outlived her sister and inlaws. But not having had children herself, she ended up living in a nephew’s home with his family.
Are you related to the Delta Utah Jeffery family?
I have a case in Madison County, AL where the widowed ancestor lived with her daughter & son-in-law 20 + years then showed up in the next census in her married granddaughter’s household. Took some deductive reasoning to figure it all out at first.