It gets worse when I get back to Susan and try to find her in most of the standard resources I would check. She isn’t in the SSDI. She isn’t in the California Death Index. She isn’t even in the one free index at VitalSearch.<\/p>\n
Okay — we regather our thoughts when this happens. How else can we attack this? We have her husband’s name (and is this a side trip all for the sake of finding an exact birth date? Yes.)<\/p>\n
It appears that she died (or divorced) between her mother’s 1915 obituary and the 1929 when her husband remarried. Her husband, Ford Barnes, is found on the 1930 Census with a wife who had been married for the first time just one year earlier.2<\/sup> The older children are noted as having a mother born in Michigan — a match to the Susan Miller Barnes I am looking for!<\/p>\n Going back another year to 1920 will help me to narrow my search window. I find Ford — but he is married to a Mabel M!?! Huh?3<\/sup> My intital reaction is that I found the wrong Ford. But he’s in San Diego — this should be the right family! Checking Mabel’s vitals shows me that she is apparantly Susan Mabel Miller Barnes. She was born in Michigan; her father was born in South Carolina; her mother was born in New York. Mystery seems to be solved! A recheck of VitalSearch shows that Susan\/Mabel likely died 24 Oct 1924 at age 44 in Merced County.4<\/sup><\/p>\n Scanning through the rest of the records on Ancestry for Ford turns up his WWI draft card where he names his wife as Mrs. Mabel Miller Barnes.5<\/sup> However, a check under the name Mabel still doesn’t turn up a birth record on FamilySearch.<\/p>\n After all that, I still didn’t end up with an exact birth date for her.<\/p>\n 1. Michigan Department of Vital Records, return of births, Jackson County, 1888: 114, 87, Fred D. Miller; digital image, “Michigan Births 1867-1902,” FamilySearch Record Search<\/em> \u00a0(http:\/\/pilot.familysearch.org: 14 Jan 2010). Scholefield Family Tree I am unable to located the birth record for Susan Miller in the Michigan records availble at FamilySearch Record Search. I tried by her parents names, just the last name and date, by date and place, and several other combinations of what I know. I even tried to read through all of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7],"tags":[25,108,125],"class_list":["post-1021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-census-findings","category-vital-records-findings","tag-barnes","tag-miller","tag-scholefield"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/findyourdead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/findyourdead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/findyourdead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/findyourdead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/findyourdead.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/findyourdead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/findyourdead.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/findyourdead.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/findyourdead.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.findyourdead.com\/wp\/wp-content\/themes\/antique\/img\/divider.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\n2. 1930 U.S. census, San Diego County, California, population schedule, San Diego, enumeration district (ED) 122, sheet 5B, p. 107B (stamped), dwelling 151, family 161, Ford Barnes household; digital image, Ancestry.com <\/em>(http:\/\/www.ancestry.com : accessed 14 Jan 2010); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T626, roll 192.
\n3. 1920 U.S. census, San Diego County, California, population schedule, San Diego, enumeration district (ED) 290, sheet 4B, p. 255B (stamped), dwelling 85, family 118, Ford Barnes household; digital image, Ancesty.com<\/em> (http:\/\/www.ancestry.com : accessed 14 Jan 2010); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm T625, roll 131.
\n4. \u201c1905-1929 Death Index Summary,\u201d digital images, p. 566, VitalSearch-California<\/em> (http:\/\/www.vitalsearch-ca.com\/gen\/ca\/_vitals\/cadeathm.htm : accessed 14 Jan 2010), entry for Mabel M Barnes (24 Oct 1924).
\n5. “World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918,” database and images, Ancestry.com <\/em>(http:\/\/www.ancestry.com : accessed 14 Jan 2010), Ford Barnes, serial no. 150, order no. 513, Draft Board 2, San Diego, San Diego, California; citing World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918<\/em>, National Archives and Records Administration microfilm M1509, roll 1543650.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"