Edna B Henry – Aunt Barb's Papers

Filling In The Blanks: Part Six

This post continues my Edna Henry and family project. I have been working on this for almost a week at an average of about 1-2 hours a day or researching.

Since I have William and Florence’s death dates from the land records and found both of their death notices in the Baltimore Sun, I want to see if I can locate their death certificate information in the Maryland death indices.
I will not be able to obtain the death certificates anytime soon. They are $25.00/certificate when ordered on-line (they are certified). So I like to wait until I have quite a few to get and then I go in person to the Archives in Annapolis, Maryland.
The indexes are available on-line at the Vital Records Indexing Project.
The index is free to search and does not require any registration. However, if you choose to generate a death certificate order you will need to create a free account.
On the main page, click Search MD Vital Records.

http://mdvitalrec.net/cfm/index.cfm

Clicking the Search link yields the search page.
The Baltimore City indexes are separate from the County indexes. For the county indexes, all counties are included within each available date range.

Search page

I will search Baltimore City first as 3030 Westfield Avenue is in Baltimore City and the closest hospitals to that location would have been in Baltimore City.
So I will click on the Baltimore City Indexes for 1875-1972.
The City indexes for 1875-1880 and 1943-1949 are different as the records are not scanned. You have the ability to type in names and years. For the rest of the indexes there are scanned images of either cards (for the counties), or index pages (for the city).

I will select 1937 to search for William.
The indexes in this time period are typed pages arranged by first letter of last name, then organized by the first vowel in the name and finally listed in order by month and day of death. Earlier indexes are hand-written and sometimes arranged by first letter of last name and then first letter of first name. Also, the earlier indexes that contain multiple years within a single index are a bit jumbled. Later indexes are organized by soundex.

I go to page 5 which covers the “H” “e” for May (William died on 5 MAY 1937).

1937 Baltimore City death index

William R. is not listed in that time period. I do notice however that scanning further down the page is a “Henry, William R.” on Jul. 11th. Hmmmm.

1937 Baltimore City death index

Could his death certificate somehow have been misfiled? I do a quick search of the Baltimore Sun for July 12-16, 1937 and do in fact find a death notice for William R. Henry that died on July 11th. There is mention of his parents (names that are not familiar) and he to be buried in Ohio. This isn’t my William.
So, perhaps he did not die in Baltimore City. Next I search the county indexes.
I click on the index for “1934-1944 Han-Hor” and page through the index and realize that the index is mislabeled. It only covers “Han-Har”, the last card in the index is for George W. Harvey.
I go back to the main search page and check the indexes for “1934-1944 Gam-Ham” and “1934-1944 Hos-Jones, J.” as maybe those have been mislabeled as well. I find nothing for “He”.
Well, this is disappointing!

Now I will search for Florence. I go back to the city index for 1939.

1939 Baltimore City death index

Yay! Finally! Progress!
Although I plan on pulling this death certificate myself on my next visit to the Maryland Archives, I still like to generate an order form. I like to print those out and place them in a folder that I labeled “Archives Search” so I have all the information I need when I go.
At the top of the search page I will click on the link to “Order a copy of a certificate from this index page”

Ordering a death certificate

At this point I am prompted to log in or create a new account.
Since I have an account I will just log in.

Others have ordered certificates from this page based on the window that pops up.
I like when a certificate I am interested in shows up here because it means at least one other person out there somewhere is interested in this person as well.
Florence isn’t on this list so I have to “Add a new transcription”

Existing transcriptions

I fill out the form.
Notice that for the date it only asks for the Year of Death. I like to put the date in parentheses so it prints out on the form. For this date range there are no Volumes and Folios listed in the index so I just leave that blank.

Transcription for Florence E. Henry

When I click Continue the transcription and pricing information is generated.

After clicking continue, the screen shows my Shipping and Billing information since I already have an account. No screen shots here!! HA!
Next it generates the order form which I can print out.
The page can be sent directly to the printer. If your computer has a PDF print driver installed you could also save it as a PDF file.
Since it is in HTML format it can be saved, but as a webpage.

At this point I have all the information I can get from the death index, but I still do not have any information on William’s death certificate. My guess is that he died in a Maryland county but it is entirely possible he didn’t even die in Maryland.

Since his death notice in the Baltimore Sun said he was to be buried at Moreland Memorial Park I will check findagrave.com and billiongraves.com to see if there is an entry for him.
Findagrave.com only has one Henry entry (not him) for Moreland Memorial Park and there are none for billiongraves.com.

I decide to try to give the cemetery a call to see if they can provide any information over the phone. Some cemeteries will, some won’t. Since I live near the Baltimore area I can certainly visit the cemetery in person. However, it is a large municipal cemetery so walking it to find them will probably not be productive.
Before I call I check their website for information (some have maps on the site, Moreland Memorial Park does not) make a list of my questions:

In what plots in the cemetery are they buried?
Do they have maps of the cemetery in the office?
Does she know where William died?
Does she know what funeral home handled the arrangements?
What were their birth dates?
Is there anyone else buried in their plot?
Can I get a hard copy of the information?

I call and the lady that answers is very nice and offers to look him up. So I start down my list.

They are buried in Section E-14, Plots 1 and 2. She then says the graves are unmarked. Of course they are, that is my luck.
Yes, they have maps in the office. I want a map!
William died in Sykesville, Maryland. She also mentioned that Florence died “at home”. Sykesville, could he have been a patient at Springfield State Hospital?
L.J. Ruck handled William’s arrangements. I will have to check to see if Ruck has any funeral home records available.

At this point she says that she needs to go because the other lines are ringing. I am not upset, I will try to visit in person soon. Most likely, since she gave me some information over the phone, I can get more in person, and hard copies.

So, if William died in Sykesville (Carroll County) that would explain why I couldn’t locate him in the death index since the county index was missing for part of the alphabet.

I can pull the certificate pretty easily knowing the county and the date but it would still be nice to see it in the index.
That is when I remember that the indexes are also located on the Maryland State Archives Guide To Government Records.
I go to the guide, go to death records and scroll down to The County Death Records 1898-1972.
I find the correct series and find that they have an Electronic version.

http://guide.mdsa.net/viewer.cfm?page=death

I click on the MSA SE58 link to bring up the county index lists, scroll to the appropriate date range and click the Link button.

http://guide.mdsa.net/series.cfm?action=viewDetailedSeries&ID=SE58&column=%5BID%5D&sort=asc&page=2

This is a huge file so I give it some time to fully load, it took a couple minutes to load the 10,106 pages in the index.
I don’t want to scroll through a bunch of pages so I take a guess and jump to page 5000. Hensley, not bad, pretty close.
Let’s try 4970. Henry, Walter Eugene. Getting closer.
Page 4972 is the winner. Found him.

http://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/stagsere/se1/se58/000100/000116/pdf/se58-000116.pdf Page 4972

Now I feel better that I did find him in an index. This wasn’t necessary, as I said before I could have pulled his certificate without the index but it does verify that this William Henry died on May 5, 1937 in Carroll County at age 78. My William was born about 1859, that would make him 78 in 1937.

I print out the index card and place it in my Archives search folder.

Let’s do a quick check to see where I am with my goals:

When and where exactly was William born? Don’t know. Hopefully when I get his death certificate I will get a clue to that information.
When and where did William die? May 5, 1937 in Carroll County, MD (Sykesville). More specific info should be on his death certificate.
When and where were William and Florence married? I haven’t even started this search yet!
What is Florence’s maiden name? SPARKS. I need to do some searches and see if I can find her before she got married to William.
What happened to Edna’s husband (since no one remembers him, only her)? Oh Edna! You are killing me with this one. My mother said she was going to visit Aunt Ruth today, maybe she will remember something to give me a hint.
Can I find any new information on William that will lead to new information on his father John Baker Henry, brother Charles Dorsey Henry or grandfather Charles L. Henry? Not yet.

I realized in my goals I forgot to add my goals for Florence (where/when she was born and where/when she died. She died Feb. 23, 1939 in Baltimore City, MD (most likely at 3030 Westfield Avenue). Her death certificate should hopefully provide that information and birth information as well.

I have much that I still need to do but I am headed in the right direction.
This will be my last post on this project. I will try to post an update as I find more but I think that I showed how to use some of the resources for Maryland research. That was my big picture goal. Search strategies will always vary depending on what information you have and what you want to know but hopefully this gave less experienced researchers so pointers.

My other suggestions:

-Use a research log.
When I first started researching I know I searched the same resources for the same person multiple times because I didn’t keep a log. Many free logs templates are available on the internet.

-Make sure to source your records.
You should be able to pinpoint exactly where your information came from, even if it was from a conversation with a relative. The internet is a great resource but it is ever changing. Records you find on-line today may be moved, web sites change etc. Don’t assume you will remember where it came from!

-Revisit your information every few years..
More and more records are becoming available. Just because you can’t find it now doesn’t mean you will never be able to find it. When I first discovered this family in the early 2000s I could not have found all this from the comfort of my home office. It was all available, just not so easily.

-Field trips are good.
All of this on-line research will be followed up by some field trips. I will go to the library to search for more newspaper articles. I will go to the MD State Archives to pull death certificates, birth information for Edna, and marriage information for William and Florence.

-Don’t forget about genealogical and historical societies.
Although I didn’t use them here, another great resource for Maryland research is the Maryland Historical Society and the various genealogical societies. It may not be financially possible to join all of them but join at least one and try to be as active as possible. You research will improve and you never know who you will meet!

-Check your local library to see what services they provide for genealogical research.
Public libraries many times offer access to subscription services; Ancestry.com, genealogybank.com, newspapers.com, local newspapers. Also see what microfilmed records they have. Different branches may have different resources. I have a U.S. subscription to ancestry.com but go to the library if I want to search the World records. I can use my own laptop by connecting to their wi-fi network.

Join social media groups.
Message boards and mailing lists are not as popular as they used to be but groups on Facebook, for example, are on the rise. You never know who you will connect with.

Filling In The Blanks: Part Five

Continuing my Edna Henry and family research. In Part Four I found potential death dates for William and Florence in the land records for 3030 Westfield Avenue. Now I want to get some other sources for their deaths.
Today I am going to see if I can find death notices for William and Florence in the Baltimore Sun.
I have a Baltimore County Public Library card so that allows me to access the archives over the internet.
The Baltimore Sun is not the only newspaper that would have a death notice but it is the one I can access from home, so it is the first one I check. On my next trip to either the Baltimore County Public Library (I usually go to the Towson Branch) or the Enoch Pratt Library (I usually go to the Central Library) I will search other papers. The Baltimore Sun may have just a death notice whereas other smaller, more local papers may have a larger article.
I go to the page and then scroll down to the Magazines & Newspapers area.

http://www.bcpl.info/find-info/databases

I log in on the next screen which leads me to the search page.
Notice that the database covers several papers.

Newspaper Options

In this case I only want to search the Baltimore Sun (1837-1988 and Sept 1990-Current). If I can’t find anything I will expand the search to all the papers.
To limit my search to the one I want I will hover my mouse over the Baltimore Sun (1837-1988 and Sept 1990-Current) and click “Search Baltimore Sun (1837-1988 and Sept 1990-Current)”.

Limit database search

This brings up the search for the database I want to use.
To find William and Florence’s death notices quickly, I want to limit the search further to specific dates ranges. Let’s start with William. The land records had a death date for William of “on or about May 5, 1937”. Assuming he did die on the 5th, his death notice may appear on the 6th or 7th at the earliest and may be run until the funeral, maybe the 8th to the 10th.
I am going to search May 6th through May 10th and if I don’t come across anything I will expand the search.
At this point I don’t know where or how William died. There are many factors that could affect his death notice appearance, if there even was a death notice. I am using a date range that is typical for death notices, about a week from the death date.
To limit the date range I will use the Advanced search.

How to launch Advanced search

I fill out my search terms and my date range. I am just searching by the name “Henry”.
Many times, because of the format of the death notices, using the last name yields better results than using the full name. This is just my experience. Also, you notice there is an option to search Obituaries. Although I am searching for a death notice, I don’t want to limit to just obits. You never know, there could be another article about him that would not show up in the limited obit search.

Advanced search

I get 72 results for the 5 days in my search range. The first one in the list is promising.
Notice on the results page you can change the sorting of the results. The default setting is “Relevance”. Usually if I am searching a wider date range I will change it to “Publication date (show oldest first)”.

Search Results

I click on the first result. I am hesitant on posing the image due to copyright but the transcription is as follows:
HENRY. – On May 5, 1937, WILLIAM
R., beloved husband of Florence E.
Henry (nee Sparks).
Funeral from his late residence,
3030 Westfield avenue, on Saturday
at 2 P.M. Interment in Moreland
Memorial Park.
SOURCE – The Sun (1837-1988); May 7, 1937; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Baltimore Sun, The (1837-1988); pg. 29; col. 7

The database gives me a choice to print or save the information. I usually like to save it (in PDF format) but I like to save the entire page.
I like to have the articles in relationship to the entire page. When I source a newspaper item I like to cite the section (if applicable), page and column and I like to attach the entire page to my source in Legacy. Obviously this isn’t possible for clippings I receive from relative, etc. unless I can go back and find the whole page. If I access newspapers on microfilm where I can’t print out the entire page, I always note the column for my source citation.

I click on a few other items in the results list but besides the same death notice on May 8, I find no other articles about William’s death.

I next run a similar search for Florence and get 102 results. I get a hit on a death notice:
HENRY. – On February 23, 1939, FLOR-
ENCE E. (nee Sparks), beloved wife
of the late William R. Henry.
Funeral from her late residence,
3030 Westfield avenue, on Saturday
at 3 P.M. Interment in Moreland
Memorial Park.
SOURCE – The Sun (1837-1988); February 24, 19397; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Baltimore Sun, The (1837-1988); pg. 21; col. 5

While I am here I will do a search for Edna as well.
I don’t want to limit the dates this time so I will do a basic search for the phrase “Edna B. Henry”.

I get 2 results for real estate transactions for another address, 2901 Bauernwood Avenue.
I make note of the address and date and make a to-do item to go back to the land records to search this property.

Now I search the phrase “Edna Henry” and get 27 results. Many of these mentions are probably not her as they are from other states for years when she was very young and wouldn’t be “working in Virginia” but some of them have a better probability of being her.
I save each possibility for closer inspection later.

Attended a birthday party in Nov 1906 for Gladys Elizabeth Cox, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Cox in Govans, MD.
Participated in a piano recital and musical in April 1907
Graduated from Govanstown public school in June 1909
A lawsuit filed against United Railways for $10,000 (this one is a long shot, but worth exploring more)

I am pretty sure the first 3 are my Edna Henry because of the mention of Govans/Govanstown where William and Florence lived during those years.
The birthday party and piano recital may seem insignificant but I always make note of the other names mentioned, especially the party. If Edna attended a birthday party it was probably a friend, maybe even a relative I have not yet discovered.
A few other interesting items:

An article in the Feb. 20, 1955 edition called “I Remember…A Child’s Govans in 1900” written by Mrs. Edna Henry Wasson. The article mentions her father’s blacksmith shop, although it lists his middle initial as “P”.
Letters to the Editor on Apr. 10, 1955 and May 8, 1955 commenting on her article.

There is the Wasson name. So maybe she just used her married name when she felt like it? So weird!
I also searched “Edna B. Wasson”, “Edna Wasson”, “Benjamin Wasson” and Benjamin H. Wasson” with no results. Searching “Wasson” yielded 956 results. I will plow through those later.

On my next trip to the library I will definitely search the other papers on microfilm for more extensive obituaries but for now what did my search yield?

May 5, 1937 as William’s death date in the death notice. I now have a second source for his death. Actually it is a 3rd source since I found the date in 2 different land records yesterday.
May 5, 1937 was a Wednesday, so his Saturday funeral would have been on May 8, 1937.
I now have a second source for Florence’s death date of Feb. 23, 1939.
Feb. 23, 1939 was a Thursday so Florence’s Saturday funeral would have been Feb. 25, 1939
Florence E. Henry’s maiden name is listed as Sparks in both his and her death notices.
They are both buried at Moreland Park cemetery. I should check cemetery sites and/or call the cemetery.
Edna wrote an article for the Baltimore Sun about growing up in Govans
Edna did use the name Wasson so the SSDI and Florida death index probably is her. Ugh!!

My next step will be to search the Maryland State Archives death indexes for William and Florence. I will post about it next time. The next post will probably be my last one for this project.

Filling In The Blanks: Part Four

Continuing my Edna Henry and family project, I am getting ready to start a Land Records search on 3030 Westfield Avenue, the property that William Henry owned in 1930 and his daughter Edna Henry owned in 1940, based on the U.S. Federal census for those years.
Since the property still exists I am going to go to the Maryland Real Property Data Search site to get the Deed Number so I can (hopefully) trace the property back to the Henrys. Depending on how many times this property has changed hands, I may have to look at several deeds.
If you have never used this method of research before it can be frustrating and intimidating at first. Stick with it! Once you have some positive results you will love it.
Also, there are other ways to research a property. This is just one way.

OK, so off to http://sdat.resiusa.org/RealProperty/Pages/default.aspx. This site is public information and free (yay, I love free!!).
In the search area I will search in Baltimore City by Street Address.

Maryland Real Property Data Search

On the next screen I will plug in the street number and name.
Note the highlighted portion.

Maryland Real Property Data Search

I am not going to post entire screen shots of the next part because it will provide information on living persons.
Once I hit ‘Next’ the property information appears.
What we want is in the upper right area where it says Deed Reference:

The deed reference is 12136/00368. 12136 is the Liber (Book) and 00368 is the Folio (Page).
Also, always take note of dates. Many times, plugging in a deed reference will generate several results. This is because deed numbers are reused, but prefaced by the court clerk’s initials. Knowing the date will help grab the correct deed. The date for this deed is 2009.
For a little more information on researching land records, this article from the Baltimore Sun may help explain the basics.
Armed with that deed reference we can start the real search.

The Maryland State Archives provides land records on mdlandrec.net.
To access the records you do need to apply for an account, but it is free. At the workshop in May it was mentioned that certain email domains (the only one I remember is AOL) were having issues with the account process. Since I already had an account at that point I really didn’t pay close attention…sorry.
Also, I would suggest you look through the HELP! link before getting started. I have used this site for several years so I am fairly familiar with navigating my way around.
Once logged in the site looks a little, well…barren.
I am going to start by selecting Baltimore City in the upper left.

mdlandrec.net

Since I have the deed reference I am going to plug that in the search.
Otherwise I would search the indexes by location and year (much more tedious).

Deed reference search

Again, no full screen shots here, living people. Also note that in this case the deed reference did not present multiple results.
There are a few items of interest in this deed.

SOURCE – BALTIMORE CITY CIRCUIT COURT (Land Records) FMC 12136, p. 0368, MSA_ce164_21289. Date available 11/03/2009. Printed 12/21/2014

The first paragraph above refers to a plat (drawing of the subdivision). If I want I can go to plats.net (free!) and put in the plat number and get an image of the plat.
The next paragraph in this deed refers to Ground Rent.
In layman’s terms, ground rent is when one person owns the land and leases it to the person who owns the real property (house) on the land. Baltimore City has a huge amount of properties that have ground rent. You can read more about ground rent here.
Although I am not interested in the ground rent information I will follow those references. There may be information that does mot appear in the actual deed. Basically, READ EVERYTHING!
The last part refers to the deed. There are different types of deeds, I won’t go into that. But essentially, this is the reference we need to go back further. FMC 648/0345 in 2000.
Remember, FMC are the clerk’s initials.

Along the yellow menu bar is the option to JUMP TO A NEW VOLUME. This allows me to plug in another deed reference.
If I just plug in the Book (648) and Page (0345) numbers I will get 4 results.
This is where I need to take note of the date reference of 2000 or the clerk initials of FMC to select the correct record.

Result by Book and Page

However, if I plug in the Clerk (FMC), Book (648) and Page (0345) I will be taken directly to the record.
I repeat this process back through the paperwork, deeds, ground rent information, mortgages etc.
I finally get to a mortgage release for Edna B. Henry on 3 May 1940 (no mention of her parents) that has a reference to a mortgage release on 7 Jun 1939 (MLP 5927/187) for Florence E. Henry widow and Edna B. Henry.
So, Florence Henry was a widow on 7 Jun 1939. This doesn’t mean William died on this date, but he was dead by this date.

SOURCE – BALTIMORE CITY SUPERIOR COURT (Land Records) MLP 5927, p. 0187, MSA_CE168_5935. Date available 02/10/2005. Printed 12/21/2014

Right below that mortgage release (on the same page) is another entry for mortgage on 7 Jun 1939 in the name of Edna B. Henry.

SOURCE – BALTIMORE CITY SUPERIOR COURT (Land Records) MLP 5927, p. 0187, MSA_CE168_5935. Date available 02/10/2005. Printed 12/21/2014

So basically a mortgage from one bank was paid off and another mortgage was obtained.
Interesting to note that this mortgage only lists Edna, no mention of Florence although it is the same day as the other mortgage record. The mortgage record continues on the next page.

“parcel of ground known as” blah blah blah (deeds are really boring), “recorded in the land records” blah blah blah “Edna B Henry subject to the payment of” blah blah blah…”William R Henry having died on or about May 5 1937 and the said Florence E Henry having died on or about February 23 1939″, blah blah WHAT?!?!?! Back up! Yup, there it is.

SOURCE – BALTIMORE CITY SUPERIOR COURT (Land Records) MLP 5927, p. 0188, MSA_CE168_5935. Date available 02/10/2005. Printed 12/21/2014

Aren’t land records cool???
Searching back further there was another record that listed William’s death date (SCL 5762/564) and I learned that 3030 Westfield Avenue was purchased by the Henrys on 7 Dec 1920 by William, Florence and Edna.
As I searched the land records I downloaded PDF copies and filed them to be transcribed and entered into my database. Normally I would do this as I search but because I wanted to created these posts “live” I couldn’t transcribe at the same time.
Oh, one other cool thing about the land records, source information is automatically printed on the left side of the pages in RED. Sometimes it is a little hard to read depending on the page image but it is there.

I’ve looked at a lot of records but it did not take much time since I had reference numbers.
So, what questions have the land records answered?

William R. Henry died on (or about) 5 May 1937
Florence E. Henry died on (or about) 23 Feb 1939

What questions do I have?

What is up with Edna’s husband (or a lack of a husband)?

If she got married in 1936 why is she still using the name “Henry”. If it were 2014 I would not be at all surprised at a woman keeping her maiden name, but in the 1930s (and at least until the 1940 census in April)? Maybe the Edna B. Henry I found in the Howard County marriage index wasn’t her, so the SSDI and Florida Death index entries aren’t for her either?

When did the house at 3030 Westfield Avenue get sold?

I never came across a land record for Edna selling 3030 Westfield Avenue. I need to follow up on that, I may have missed something.

So now that I have potential death dates for William and Florence (I don’t want to rely on just information in the land records), searches of the Baltimore Sun and the Maryland State Archives death indexes are in order.

Let me say that I was a bit surprised when I found death dates for both Florence and William!
Remember that I chose this method of searching because the property appeared to stay in the family after William and Edna disappeared from the household (1940 census) AND the property still exists. I thought there was a possibility I could get some good information and (for once) my hunch proved correct. I said before how I love free. I also I love LUCK!

OK, the dogs won’t walk themselves and it is football day. So although it is so hard to stop, especially after finding some new information, those searches will have to wait.