Today a hint popped up on my family tree on Ancestry. I found out that my mother’s dad was William G Stricker. And that Willie Stricker was the son of Minnie Nevada Ivie. Interesting isn’t it? Since neither is correct. I also found out that Willie was born in Japan. Which must have been difficult since neither of his actual parents, nor his stepmother were ever in Japan.
I recently had some interesting correspondence with a researcher, who had Uncle Amos as a husband and father to a wife and daughter in Iowa. I would have been willing to bet that Uncle Amos was never in Iowa in his life. He was married to Aunt Oma when they were quite young and still married the day he died.
We corresponded back and forth. She was convinced she had the right individual and told me it wouldn’t have been more than 2-1/2 hour drive to Randolph, Missouri from where her people lived in Iowa. That didn’t sound right, so I did the Map Quest check, and even with today’s cars and roads it would be a 5 to 6 hour drive from where Uncle Amos lived to the place in Iowa, and no one in the family had a car as yet.
She did some more checking and now she has happily found the right William Amos for her. Someone else has done the same thing to the poor man, and I’m sure he is not guilty this time either. I just haven’t had the heart to take on that one yet. Ancestry has a lot of good records, many collected by the LDS. Some trees have a lot of incorrect information.
Since the LDS {Mormon Church} is counting on getting these people into heaven by proxy baptism, even after death, I wonder if it will make a difference it the wrong name is assigned to the wrong person. Wouldn’t it be awful to think you might go to hell just because you weren’t identified properly!
