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?

Sunday's Obituary - Agnes Welch Garrigus

Agnes Welch Garrigus
with son Alfred
St. Louis World's Fair

Mrs. Agnes Garrigus

Mrs. Agnes Welch Garrigus, 85, widow of Clarence G. Garrigus, died at her home at Tylerville Friday morning.

She had been a resident of Haddam for 27 years.

She was born Jan. 19, 1873, in Litchfield; a daughter of the late Mark and Sarah C. Welch.

She leaves a son, Alfred C. Garrigus; three grandchildren; and six great grandchildren. The funeral will be held at the Funk Funeral Home in Bristol Monday at 2 p.m. The Rev. Roy G. Pavy, pastor of the East Haddam Congregational Church, will officiate. Burial will be in West Cemetery.

There will be no calling hours.

Source: Hartford Courant, Hartford, CT, Dec 20, 1958

Relationship to me: great grand aunt; sister of my great grandmother, Mary "Minnie" Welch Kelly

Happy Labor Day

The Kelly Family of Greenwood, Nebraska welcomes the Garrigus Family of Connecticut

As families gather for end of summer festivities, I wish all of my blog readers a Happy Labor Day.

52 Weeks to Better Genealogy - Challenge #28 - Patents and Trademarks

Do you have Patience for Patents?

This week's challenge in 52 Weeks to Better Genealogy is to spend some time with patents and trademarks. The two sites recommended for use were the U.S. Patent and Trademark office and Google Patent Search.

I had little patience for the U.S. Patent Office web site. There were just too many links to wade through, so I returned to my good friend Google and tried its patent search for the first time. I typed in a couple family names with no results, then remembered that the brother-in-law of my great-grandmother was an inventor. I typed in the surname "Garrigus" and got a result that I will gladly add to my genealogy research.

Clarence Garrigus was, indeed, an inventor. Earlier this year, I learned that he had developed the Universal Breadmixer in 1903. He and his wife, Agnes Welch Garrigus, used their kitchen as a laboratory to develop the product. His obituary stated that during the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904, Garrigus passed out samples of bread made with the mixer from his wife's recipe.

A quick search and there on the computer screen in front of me was the drawing for Clarence's Dough Mixer, No. 736,956 patented August 25, 1903.

I found several more of Clarence Garrigus' patents. Another one that interested me was his Vibration Eliminator for Phonograph Turntables in 1929.

That patent application begins "The invention relates to sound translating apparatus as utilized in the recording and reproduction of sound, more especially a turntable for supporting and rotating a suitable disk record or blank and to which table rotational movement is communicated through an intermediate shaft from a suitable driving member, as a spring or electric motor."

That makes me wonder what Clarence would have thought about CDs and mp3s!

Surname Saturday - Welch

The Welch Family of Waterbury, Connecticut

Mark Welch and Sarah Conneally of Waterbury, Connecticut were my great-great grandparents. I am descended from their daughter, Mary Janice "Minnie" Welch, who married Daniel Kelly.

Details about this family still remain a bit elusive for me, although a few more details continue to surface from time to time.

It was only this past January that a "cousin" discovered a photograph of Mark and Sarah's grave site at St. Anthony's Cemetery in Litchfield, Connecticut.

Most of the family information that I've been able to put together came from the autograph books of Minnie Welch and her sister, Nellie.

Mark Welch was born in Ireland in 1826. His first wife was named Bridget and they had three daughters: Sarah, Catharine and Jane. After Bridget's death, he married Sarah Conneally and their children were Edward T, Mark Jr, Nellie, Annie, Mary Janice, Marcella, Agnes and William.

Besides my great grandmother, the only other member of the Welch family who I've been able to trace forward was Agnes Welch, who married Clarence Garrigus. My discoveries about this family are included in earlier blog posts.

Ancestry.com indicates the name Welch is an ethnic name for someone of Welsh origin. It also states that the usual spelling used in Ireland is Walsh. Top places of origin of Welch immigrants is Ireland, followed by England, Scotland and Germany.

I suppose that the families I have the most interest in are those who are the most elusive. I am hopeful that one day I'll have a much more comprehensive family biography of my Welch-Conneally ancestors.

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: When the pieces come together . . .

After receiving the photo of the gravestone of my great great grandparents, Mark Welch and Sarah Conneally, I went back to work on filling in some pieces of the Welch family genealogy. I'd had a great start as I have the autograph books that belonged to my great grandmother, Minnie Welch Kelly and her sister, Nellie Welch. Members of the family signed their entries as cousin, brother, uncle, aunt, etc. This really provided me with the first instance of being able to connect family members together.

Email correspondence amongst my fellow Conneally "cousins" and family history researchers continued to present some more clues to family relationships. We became intriguted with the 1900 census which showed Mark Welch at age 74, widowed and living with (as indexed) Clarence Gawngus, Margartta Gawngus and their child, Alfred C. Gawngus.

Other searches of the Gawngus name showed a possible variation as Gaengus. Again, this produced very little in other records searches. So I began searching based only the first names of the family. This turned out to be successful and I discovered the correct surname for this family was Garrigus.

My next step was to, once again, look through my great grandmother's photograph album that included photos of the family members in Connecticut. There I found the photograph above. The handwriting certainly confirmed the last name of Garrigus and there was Alfred, who was listed as their son in 1900 census.

One of the Conneally "cousins" asked if the family had other children. I had come across a daughter, Ethel, in a later census. Back to the photograph album.



Alfred and Ethel Garrigus

Aha! Written on the photo were the names Alfred and Ethel. The connection to the Welch family was made! From that point, I was able to find several members of the Garrigus family which I have added to my family tree. I am hopeful that I can locate some obituaries and tombstone locations that may lead me to more of the Welch family members.

You just never know what will happen when one thing leads to another.