Missouri State Genealogical Society Conference

Not only did the genealogists come to town this summer, but I got to meet up with some of my long time genealogy friends at the annual conference of the Missouri State Genealogical Society (MoSGA) in Columbia, Missouri in August.

The keynote speaker was D. Joshua Taylor, president of the Federation of Genealogical Societies and on-air talent for Genealogy Roadshow and Who Do You Think You Are? I had not heard Josh speak in person before, so that was a real treat. The conference was also an opportunity to meet up with my fellow bloggers, Jenna Mills of Desperately Seeking Surnames, Diana Ritchie of Random Relatives. Also part of the "Genealogy Girls Gone Wild" weekend were Beth Foulk (Genealogy Decoded) and Diana's friend, Nancy Knight. I also got to spend a few minutes catching up with Kathleen Brandt of A3 Genealogy, another researcher on Who Do You Think You Are?

Beth Foulk

Beth Foulk has been speaking about genealogy regionally for quite some time. I first met her when she spoke at the state conference of the Nebraska State Genealogical Society a couple years ago. Beth is knowledgeable, energetic and enthusiastic. Many of us have commented that she should be on the national genealogy speaking circuit. That is going to happen when she speaks at the conference of the National Genealogical Society in St. Charles, Missouri next May. If you are going, make sure you attend Beth's sessions. Beth totally rocked it in Columbia with her pre-session. Even though I heard her speak about timelines at the Nebraska conference, I learned even more this time around.

Josh Taylor shares some "behind the scenes"
stories of genealogy on TV

Josh Taylor's conference sessions were informative and interesting. However, the talk I enjoyed the most was his after dinner presentation with some "behind the scenes" stories from Genealogy Roadshow and Who Do You Think You Are? While contract provisions don't allow him to tell all of the secrets, he was able to share enough to give us a glimpse that it's not always like you see it on TV!

It's always a treat when you find something in the book sale that relates to your family.
My Revolutionary War ancestor, Johannes Bellinger,
is included in this volume I found on Early Families of Herkimer County New York.

The highlight of the weekend was hanging out with my friends and talking genealogy.

Me and Diana Ritchie
I still don't have that "selfie" thing quite figured out!

Jenna Mills - probably Tweeting about the conference

Diana, Nancy and Me
Diana and I were winners in the prize drawings.
Apparently I didn't understand the "rules" so I dropped my ticket in any old basket I found.
So my prize was donated to the library of my local society.
Photo (c) Jenna Mills 2014

After enjoying a wonderful meal with friends,
overlooking the Missouri River at sunset.

Coming Up in 2015!
Judy Russell, The Legal Genealogist
will be the featured speaker next year.
I'll be there!

Sometimes I don't always make it to the conferences I register for, but when I do, it's well worth it! I'll be making two trips to Missouri next year - for the NGS conference in May and the MoSGA conference in August.

Sunday's Obituary - Nellie Welch Tibbetts

Mrs. F. L. Tibbetts
Dies at Age of 89

Mrs. Nellie E. Tibbetts, 89, died yesterday morning at her home, 3225 South 11th street, following a long illness.

Born at Litchfield, Conn., she had resided in St. Joseph since 1885. She was a member of St. Joseph Cathedral.

Survivors include her husband, Frank L. Tibbetts, of the home, and a sister, Mrs. Agnes Garrigus, haddone [sic], Conn.

The body is at the Heaton-Bowman mortuary where the parish rosary will be recited this evening at 7:30. Services will be tomorrow morning at 10 at St. Joseph's Cathedral with the Rev. Patrick Tobin officiating. Burial will be in Mount Olivet cemetery.

source: St. Joseph (MO) News Press, April 29, 1956, Page 4
note: Agnes Garrigus lived in Haddam, Connecticut


The back story - a brief case study

I found this obituary online last evening while looking for something else. Nellie and Agnes were sisters of my great grandmother, Minnie Welch Kelly. These daughters of Mark Welch and Sarah Conneally were on my mind after writing about Minnie Welch's autograph book in the Fearless Females series.

From time to time, I will go back to an online resource and repeat a search, since new information is added to the internet daily. Last evening, I went to the Google News Archive and typed in "Agnes Garrigus." Her name showed up in a 1956 obituary from the St. Joseph News Press in Missouri. I knew there was a family connection in St. Joseph, but did not know who it was.

The obituary, posted above, indicated that Nellie Tibbetts was a sister of Agnes Garrigus. Nellie Welch!

As mentioned in the article about her sister Minnie's autograph book, I also have the autograph book that belonged to Nellie Welch. I didn't know if she had remained in Connecticut or if she had moved to the Midwest, either with Minnie or later. Now I knew that Nellie had moved to St. Joseph, Missouri and I had her married name!

My next step was to enter the information about Nellie and her husband, Frank L. Tibbetts, into my Ancestry.com tree. It was there that I found them in the census records for 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930. There were never any children listed in their household, but Frank's father, John Tibbetts, lived with them as he grew older.

One of the best pieces of information discovered on Ancestry was the couple's marriage license from the Missouri marriage records database. The couple was married in St. Joseph on September 20, 1893. This was five years after her sister, Minnie, married my great grandfather, Daniel Kelly, in Nebraska.

Finding the death certificates

Since Nellie and Frank lived in Missouri, my next step was the Missouri Digital Heritage site. This is a wonderful online resource, especially if your Missouri ancestor died in the state between 1910 - 1960. Images of death certificates are available on the site.

I searched for Tibbetts and found Frank's death certificate, but not Nellie's. Frank died just 11 months after his wife died. I tried searching under various spelling variations of Tibbetts to locate Nellie's death certificate with no results. Then I searched by her first name only. There I found her, with her last name recorded as Tibbets.

Her last name was spelled incorrectly on the death certificate, but her husband's name (the informant) was spelled correctly.

My next step was to visit FindAGrave to see if there were memorials for the couple at Mt. Olivet Cemetery. Being none, I created them and posted a request for photographs of their headstones.

The Tibbetts home in St. Joseph, Missouri

Perhaps you've had a photograph, a newspaper article or a document gnaw at you. It's providing you with a little information, but not everything that you want to know. There are several photographs in Minnie Welch Kelly's photograph album that show people in front of a brick home in St. Joseph, Missouri around 1905. The address of the home is written on at least one of the photographs.

The house still exists today, I learned from doing a search on Google Street View a couple years ago. While driving home after the Family History Expo in Kansas City last summer, I even considered doing a drive-by of the house, but I didn't.

The Tibbetts home in St. Joseph, Missouri

Here is a cropped photograph of the Tibbetts home in St. Joseph, Missouri. I am not posting the address since the home is still occupied.

The address written on the photograph matches the address of Frank and Nellie Tibbetts in the census records.

Even in the early 1900s, I thought this appeared to be a beautiful home, made of brick, with intricate detail in the masonry.

Oh, to be able to identify all of the people in the photograph. I've deduced that the young boy is Alfred Clarence Garrigus, since he is identified in other photographs and wearing the same clothing.

I can only speculate that the women are the Welch sisters. The gentleman - perhaps this is Frank Tibbetts? Or perhaps it's Mr. Garrigus.

Based on newspaper articles and Minnie's photo album, I've learned that the Garrigus family made a trip to the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904 and likely visited Agnes' sisters in St. Joseph, Missouri and Greenwood, Nebraska on the same trip.

Brick Masons

As I looked over the census records for the Tibbetts and also discovered Frank's entry in several city directories for St. Joseph, why was I not the least bit surprised that both Frank and his father were brick masons! There was something about this beautiful brick house that had been gnawing at me for a long time. I just never came across any photographs of family homes that were anything but frame. So for the Tibbetts to live in this beautiful brick home made complete sense.

I'm sure this research saga will continue because I still want to be able to make positive identifications of all of the people who were photographed in front of the home in St. Joseph.

Will I make that side trip to see the home on my return trip from the Family History Expo this summer? What do you think?

Midwest Genealogy Center - Independence, Missouri

If you're planning on attending the Family History Expo in Kansas City, add another day to your trip and spend some time at the Midwest Genealogy Center in Independence, Missouri.

Some of this week's favorite web sites

Here are a few web sites that I definitely recommend:

Script Tutorials - resources for old handwriting and documents. Are you having trouble interpreting some of the old handwriting styles? This site, managed by the Center for Family History and Genealogy at Brigham Young University, offers tutorials on how to read those old documents - in German, Dutch, Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

Virtual Calendars - I don't think that a research day goes by that I don't use this resource to identify dates referenced in newspapers. Do you find an obituary that says only that someone died "last Tuesday" and doesn't give the date? Start with the date of the newspaper, then go to this site and view the calendar for that month and year. You can determine what date was "last Tuesday."

Missouri Digital Heritage - if you are doing any research at all in Missouri, you need to check out this web site. It even has a treasure chest of digital versions of death certificates - all for free. It doesn't get much better than that. It was named as one of Family Tree Magazine's 101 best web sites in 2009.

The Minnesota Historical Society is another of my favorite sites. I've located death records and have been able to order copies of death certificates for a reasonable price.

Closer to home, the Nebraska State Historical Society just keeps getting better all the time. The site has a fantastic blog you must check out! The April 23, 2010 entry deals with the Great Sheedy Murder Trial of 1891, a story that has surfaced frequently in my research on great-grandfather Dan Kelly's brother-in-law, John Fitzgerald.

Which brings me around to THE BEST interactive history site I've encountered in recent memory, Gilded Age Plains City. I challenge you to click that link and spend anything less than an hour looking around, following links and interacting with the site.

Paula's Genealogical Eclectica - this is Paula Stuart-Warren's fantastic blog. A fantastic blog from a fantastic person. I was fortunate to spend Friday and yesterday soaking up all of Paula's tips and research ideas at the Nebraska State Genealogical Society convention. Her blog offers more great ideas, resources and just plain fun.

And - I'm pleased to announce that LongLostRelatives.net has been added to the GeneaBloggers blog! With more than 900 genealogy blogs identified on the site, you can't help but find information on a topic you are interested in!

You Can't Ignore the In-Laws - a long lost relatives success story!

Every few weeks, I go through the photo album that belonged to my great-grandmother, Mary (Minnie) Welch Kelly, who began her life in Connecticut and moved to Nebraska as a young woman in her twenties. That photo album, along with her autograph book and the autograph book of her sister, Nellie Welch, gave me the first real clues to the relationships in the Welch family.

An earlier post on this blog back in January shared my success in identifying members of the Garrigus family - one of Minnie's other sisters, Agnes Welch, married Clarence Gregory Garrigus and they had two children, Alfred and Ethel.

Just last weekend, I discovered obituaries of Clarence and Agnes in the Hartford (CT) Courant newspaper. I knew that Clarence was an inventor as I had discovered one of his patent applications online. His obituary states, "With his wife, Mrs. Agnes Welch Garrigus, he developed the Universal Breadmixer in 1903. The couple used their kitchen as a laboratory."

The obituary goes on to say, "During the World Fair in St. Louis, Mo., in 1904, he passed out bread samples made from the recipe of his wife, who used the new mixer."

The bells in my head started to go off and I returned to great-grandmother Minnie's photo album once again.


Far right, Agnes Welch Garrigus with her son, Alfred Garrigus, at the World's Fair in St. Louis, Missouri in 1904.

I had previously identified Alfred from two other photographs in the album, so this elegant woman with him in the St. Louis photographs has to be his mother, Agnes Welch Garrigus.


Agnes Welch Garrigus and Alfred Garrigus

This photograph identifies the address of where the photograph was taken, but I haven't been able to determine what it says - yet.

This series of photographs in Minnie's album also includes the man who I believe is Clarence Gregory Garrigus.


Dan Kelly gives Clarence Garrigus a ride.

The photo album also includes photographs of the Garrigus family in Nebraska. I am inferring that the Garrigus family visited Agnes' sister, Minnie Welch Kelly, in Nebraska on the same visit to the West when they attended the World's Fair in St. Louis. In the photo above, my great-grandfather, Dan Kelly (Minnie's husband) is having a bit of fun for the camera by giving his brother-in-law, Clarence Garrigus, a ride in the wheelbarrow.

So - after all of these years, I am able to begin identifying the other family members in Minnie's photo album. And this was because I located the obituary of Clarence Garrigus that told about the 1904 trip to the World's Fair in St. Louis.

Follow all of the leads and clues that come your way - and don't ignore the in-laws!

Success Story: Long Lost Relative Discovered!

William Kieran Langdon



I've been working on a timeline on William Kieran Langdon for several months. The story of a legal squabble within his family has captivated me. In summary, his parents were Margaret Kelly and Michael J. Langdon. He was born in 1885 in Texas, even though his death certificate says he was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. I'll go with Texas as that shows up on numerous census records.

Michael J. Langdon spent the last four years of his life in insane asylums in New York and Nebraska. A few years later, Margaret Kelly Langdon, as guardian of her son, William Kieran Langdon, had her son committed to the State Hospital in Nevada, Vernon County, Missouri where he resided for 15 years. Shortly after his release, he filed suit to obtain the portion of his father's estate to which he was entitled. His mother had appropriated much of his share of the estate for her own use. She had involved her brothers, Daniel Kelly (my great grandfather) and Michael C. Kelly as bondsmen on the money and they became liable for the bond. This portion of the case went to the Nebraska Supreme Court.

So - I began my quest to find William Kieran Langdon. His 1918 draft registration showed him working at the State Hospital in Nevada. For months, his entry in the U S Census records have eluded me. This past weekend I received a copy of a photograph of William Kieran Langdon playing the piano. The photograph made me go back to the 1920 and 1930 census records for Nevada, Missouri. There I found a Jack Langdon, born in Texas in 1885 and by 1930 was married to a woman named Sarah. His occupation? He was a musician in a dance hall in 1920 and in 1930 a musician and teacher. This was definitely starting to look like a lead.

Through the Missouri Digital archives, I discovered a death certificate for Sarah Langdon, who died in Nevada, Missouri on 14 November 1954. The death certificate lists her husband as Wm. K. Langdon.

Through the magic of Google news archives, I discovered some issues of the Nevada Daily News and after going through the the issues from 1957 discovered a notice of the death of Jack Langdon and one about the funeral rites for W. K. "Jack" Langdon. That last one was confirmation that the William Kieran Langdon I'd been seeking and "Jack" Langdon were one and the same person.

As I searched some more in the Nevada Daily Mail,I found some advertisements that showed he played piano at the movie theater, and that the Jack Langdon Red Hot Pepper Orchestra performed on Christmas, 1926 at a place called Haddock.

The 1957 death notice for Jack Langdon and his death certificate both state he was a retired taxi driver. Now I am curious how he went from being a musician to becoming a taxi driver. He left a wife at the time of his death, but Sarah had died three years earlier. His death certificate states his wife was Dorothy Langdon.

The few pieces of the puzzle that I discovered just make me hungry to discover even more!