Scholefield Family Tree
The best thing about working with people who lived recently is that you can access the Social Security Death Index (SSDI). It is a free database on lots of genealogy sites — so many I won’t list them all here!
I have come back to the SSDI because I am curious about Frederica –?– Moore, James Arthur Moore’s second wife. Since the 1930 Census reports that she was born about 18801, it is possible that she lived long enough to receive benefits.
Searching just her name returns three women and one who was born about 1880:
Name: Frederica Moore
SSN: 545-38-6711
Last Residence: [none listed]
Born: 31 May 1879
Died: Apr 1965
State (Year) SSN issued: California (Before 1951)2
A birth month of May is plausible because the census in 1930 was taken in April and she would have appeared to be a year younger. Also James and Frederica did live in California before 1951. A handy tool for Decoding Social Security Numbers is located on Steve Morse’s site. Plugging in the first 5 digits narrows the issue date to between 1936 and 1950. (I know that is not too narrow, but it means that she could have gotten her number in the ten year window between 1936 and her husband’s death in Arizona in 1946 — or she moved back to California at some point!)
Other results for persons in the tree for whom additional information was needed:
Searches for James’s daughter Maud T. Moore (checking because I need the day of her birth) returns one “Maude” who was born in Feb 1894, but died in Kansas in 1987. This doesn’t seem to be a likely match. There are too many women with the first name of Maud(e) to make checking for all possible surnames to locate a possible married name practical.
A birthday was located for Claude Kenyon who was born on 28 Apr 1893.3
There are several others appear in the SSDI, but they are persons for whom I am only collecting DOB, so I will not bore you with confirming those full dates which I already have.
1. See post dated 8 Nov 2008.
2. Social Security Administration, “Social Security Death Index,” database, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 28 Nov 2008), entry for Frederica Moore, 1965, SS no. 545-38-6711.
3. Ibid., entry for Claude Kenyon, 1975, SS no. 556-57-6025.