Susan DeGraff Miller — Vitals

Scholefield Family Tree

Now I am working to complete the information about Harmonus DeGraff and Susannah Thomas’s children. (I feel like I’m trying to collect the whole set here!) Based on what has been found before, three of their children made it to adulthood. Susan is the last sibling I need to check into. The most logical place to begin is with the censuses. I could locate all of them, but some censuses are more useful than others because of the information that was recorded.

According to the 1900 Census, Susie was born in Feb 1849.1 She was with her husband Fred C. Miller, born Aug 1849 in South Carolina, and her two children Susie M., born Nov 1879 in Michigan, and Fred DeG., born Jul 1888 in Michigan. In Susie’s obit,2 only one of her two children was mentioned as living, her daughter. If I had stopped with the obit, I’d have never known about Fred. This census also noted the number of children a woman had given birth to, and the number 2 in that column tells me that I can be reasonably certain that I have all the children’s names. (Of course, it could have been wrong.)

In 1880, Susan was in Jackson, Michigan, with her husband, daughter, and mother.3 This census confirms that the daughter was born in November. It also additional proof that the background research conducted into the Widow Susan Ghost story is correct. It confirms his finding that Widow Susan was in Michigan in 1880.4 Whenever possible it is a good thing to confirm data posted online. It ensures that the person wasn’t pulling your leg, and it can lead to new discoveries — or an old discovery made new because the pieces finally fit! In this case, it is the finding that the enumerator placed parentheses around Widow Susan’s age. Possibly he was unsure if it was exact? It makes this Susan DeGraff born 1821 even easier to reconcile with the Susan DeGraff born as calculated from her death record on 15 Sep 1819.5 Of course, both could still be a bit off!

Research Plan:

  1. Check FamilySearch record search for Michigan births. More specific dates for Susan and Fred might be found.
  2. Determine if this is a stopping point for the Scholefield Project.

1. 1900 U.S. census, San Diego County, California population schedule, San Diego, enumeration district (ED) 194, sheet 18A, p. 37 (handwritten), 171 (stamped), dwelling 408, family 454, Household of Fred C. Miller; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 13 Jan 2010); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T623, roll 99.
2. See post dated 30 Dec 2009.
3. 1880 U.S. census, Jackson County, Michigan population schedule, Jackson, enumeration district (ED) 119, p. 318D (stamped), 12 (handwritten), dwelling 121, family 123, Household of Fred C. Miller; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 13 Jan 2010); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T9, roll 585.
4. See post dated 5 Sep 2009.
5. See post dated 30 Oct 2009

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