The Mystery of my 2X great grandmother

It has been some time since I have been able to post, but I finally finished up all my classes for fall semester. Mostly A's but I do believe I will have a final grade of B in my Intro to Psych class. Now that i am able to get back into my research again I am puzzled yet again by a particular woman.

My 2x great grandmother Charlotte Ann (Sloan) Hoffman. I have records for her marriage to her husband, and I have the names of her parents from her death records. However the issue is, I can not link her to her parents in any other records. The censuses in which she should've been living at home with her parents she's not listed. I have gotten aggravated in the past for not being able to find her prior to marrying her husband, but I put it on the back burner then to come back to with a clearer head. Here's to hoping I can make some breakthrough this time.

I have 2 possible birth years for her 1878 and 1881. If 1881 is correct she will not appear on any census until 1900. She married her husband in 1901, and is on the 1910 census with him and their sons. In the 1880 census her parents and her 2 half sisters (her mothers first husband died in the Civil War and left her a widow with two young daughters) are listed, but not her. It is very possible her age was bumped back in order to marry early, as it was VERY common back then. Charlotte would have been 19-22 years old in the 1900 census. Not married, which means she should've been either at home with her parents, possibly living with other relatives, or less often the norm then, living alone and working.

Her parents were James D. Sloan and Leah Rhodes, both from Pennsylvania, and they lived in the Huntingdon area. Leah had previously married Solomon Lemmon, but he was killed during the Civil War. Leah's other daughters were Sarah Catherine & Margaret Ann Lemmon. I am still working on connecting each of James and Leah's parents to my tree, as I hadn't previously done much on this family line.

In order to figure out where Charlotte was, I will have to track each of her grandparents and both of these half sisters. IF I don't find her there, I guess I will need to keep digging. I hope to solve this mystery for myself. She surely was a beautiful woman, I wish I had more pictures of her.

Pictured here is Charlotte and her sons Phil on the left and Frank on the right. Frank was my Great Grandfather. This picture was taken (my estimation) about 1907 based on the approximate ages of her sons.

My littlest one is napping and that is such a rare occurrence so I think I will take this time to get some Christmas presents wrapped.

Education

Monday starts a new journey for me.  I will be starting my freshman year online at New River Community College.  I have been out of school for 15 years, at first I was terrified about taking classes online, or at all honestly.  I always wanted to go to college while in high school, but I was never decided on what I wanted to do.  Life happened and I didn't go, but I am glad that I waited since I know what I want to do now.

I am planning on getting my Associates of Science in General Education.  That may change as I talk with my advisor on which is my best option.  I can go with a liberal arts program, and I will have more freedom for certain classes.  However, that also requires 2 semesters of foreign language.  My previous experience with it are telling me not to, but for a business aspect I think it would be beneficial.

I took Latin in 6th and 7th grade, and Spanish in 8th and 9th.  I honestly didn't enjoy either class, and I barely retained anything over the years.  Vocabulary wasn't the hard part, but the usage, pronouns etc, I hated that in English, so in a different language it made it that much worse.  If I decided to go that route, I would probably choose German, as I think it would be the most beneficial to me in the long run.

Several of my family lines are from Germany, I run across some information that was in German and I would love to be able to read it to see what exactly it pertains to.  I would also love to be able to translate my Aunt Donna's family bible that is in German.  I am not on board with the decision yet, but I am not 100% against it either.

I was able to start one of my classes early, College Success Skills, and I have completed the 14 weeks of assignments.  All I have left to complete is my final Exam, which is a 500 word essay.  I only have to wait until everything is available online Monday to do that.  It was a very easy class, but I did learn quite a bit.  It focused on things like how to study more efficiently but spend less time actually studying, taking good notes, how to prepare for exams, stress and anxiety etc.

The other classes I am taking this semester are Computer Business Applications, College Composition I, United States History and Principals of Psychology. I checked out my professors on ratemyprofessor.com and all but one has great ratings.  I am pretty excited to get started.  Although I initially wasn't sure which of my social electives I would be interested in, I am pretty stoked to be taking Psych, and plan to take a second course later specifically about children.  It really doesn't relate to my business plans, but like my advisor told me, I need to take some classes for fun.

Last week my kids started school, one in 1st grade and the other in 7th grade.  Their first week went well, although the youngest is a bear to get up in the morning, no matter what time she gets in bed.  My mother reminded me I was always difficult to get up as a child.  I still am not a morning person to be honest.

I am very excited, but nervous as well, I hope that I am able to keep up with a full class schedule each semester.  I don't think it will be a problem though, I just got to remind myself I don't have time to play on Facebook and Ancestry all day long anymore.  I will have to dedicate a certain time frame for that so that I don't get wrapped up into it.  I am a procrastinator most of the time, so my oldest daughter plans to ask me everyday when she gets home if I did my schoolwork.

Finding Susie

I took on the task of researching the grandmother of the man that raised me.  You see, she passed away early in her years and only had one child who was in jail at the time.  Her grandchildren were all very young, some were not even born yet.  Two of them recalled her passing, but couldn't remember exactly when.  When Bernie told me that he had been looking for Susie, but never found her, I offered to help look. I had been researching my own family off and on for years, and really enjoyed piecing together my history.  The least I could do was try to help.  The only information he was able to give me was her name, her maiden name and the name of her husband.  I did not have a birth date, but an approximate time frame, "about 1905."  No death date, I only knew she passed when he was young, so sometime about 1960.

We had pictures of her alive about in 1958, so that helped.  I truly hoped to help locate her final resting place.  Bernie's father, "Pops" as I call him, is up in age now, and wishes to say his last goodbyes to his mother.  He's searched many times over the years, but never has found her.  He thought he remembered where she was buried, but has been there many times and can not find her.  They had been to the courthouse that owns the cemetery and they claimed to have no records of her buried there.

So I started with the basics, census records.  First I found Susie and Pops living as boarders in 1940.  I then found them in 1930 census living with her first husband, Pops' father.   This was the correct Susie.  It stated she was 20 years old and had married at 18.  So, married in or about 1928.  I found her in 1920, living with her uncle Frank and grandmother Jennie.  Checking into previous censuses for Jennie, I learned she had 3 sons: John, Oliver and Frank.  So that left John and Oliver as her possible fathers.  I couldn't find her in a census for 1910 living with either of the possible fathers, so I took a trip to the local courthouse.  I found her marriage license that listed her parents, Oliver was her father. It listed her age, so still no birth date.

I knew we could order her death certificate if we were able to gather up enough information, but I still was not finding her birth or death date.  Not on Ancestry or Familysearch, or multiple other resources.  I knew with so many local families with the same last name here in town, someone had to be related to Susie that remembered where she was buried.  I've always figured more of them had to be related than who all they claimed, as their last name is very common here.   I starting asking friends on Facebook for their parents & grandparents names.  Soon I had quite a list of people that I could connect to this same family tree I had put together.  Although most of them did not think they were related to this bunch, they were.

Turns out, after searching more, with the help of my friends, I was made aware that Susie's baby sister was still alive and well.  After speaking with her I had another person confirming that she was buried where her son remembers.  I made another trip to that courthouse with this information, I searched thru their plot books, still couldn't find her, or anyone that would've purchased her plot for her.  I was disappointed, but didn't stop looking.  I figured that I might as well put this tree together better, since I already had so much information.  One evening while looking up records for one of the family members I saw new hints on people that I had already cleared up.  I checked a person and found out that Ancestry released new information, was I in luck?  Was I finally going to find more on Susie?

Sure enough, when I went to her profile, there it was.  Her death certificate, her marriage and divorce records, all staring back at me.  I was so thrilled I called Bernie right away, he apparently was asleep as it was almost 11pm.  I had all the information I needed, but her burial location only said the city's name, and cemetery.  There is only one in the city limits, so again I call the courthouse.  I now have her birth and death date, maybe that will help.

Unfortunately, they still can not find records for her.  The funeral home has been out of business for many years.  The funeral home that took over for them has since closed down.  I was able to locate where the second homes records are kept, but they have no idea where the previous record books are.  I was hoping to find the records, maybe at least it would say the actual cemetery.  I've called around and enlisted the help of a few other historians in the area, but so far no one has managed to locate those records.

Although I know she has to be in that cemetery, I really wish I was able to show her son exactly where she is buried.  I feel as I have not reached my goal.  I like to have all of the information available for a person, and Susie's story is not complete.  I know that I brought tons of information they did not even know.  Bernie didn't even know his great grandparents' names.  I was able to trace back several generations, uncover her birth and death dates for them, plus the dates of her marriages.  I know I gave them a lot of information they otherwise did not have.  But to me, her story is not complete.  One day I will find her.

Working on finding Susie and this tree, has sparked further interest.  I found it very gratifying to help Bernie's family piece together this mystery.  I really enjoyed helping someone else with their family, and I realized this is something I have such a passion for.  I have been working on my own tree and branches of it off and on for years.  Anytime I uncovered something new, I would get so excited.  But this, was something totally different.  I knew where my family came from, and it was just uncovering the records for people I knew existed.  Finding Susie meant something I had never done before, working from no information and building a tree, connecting family members here in town to their cousins they didn't know they were even related to.  I am very proud to say that even though I still haven't found Susie's final resting place, I helped reunite some long lost family members.