Today I did something a little different. I made a Dead End List, in which I wrote down all of my ancestors that have been dead ended for far too long. Then underneath each name, I wrote the greatest road block and the next step for each person. I was totally honest with myself and came up with a list of seven people, all women.
- Mary McDaniel
- Lillian Belle Bennett
- Annie G. Rorer
- Catherine Fenity
- Sarah Ann Bartlett
- Birdie M. Doyle
- Lavina F. Loveless
The consensus for most of them was that I needed to start searching for marriage records, or do more research on children or siblings to find any missing information. So I went to Familysearch.org to search among the freebie records to see what I could find.
I discovered a marriage record for Mary's daughter Vestena, which brings me one step closer to finding her. Searches for her other children yielded no results for now.
Sarah Ann wasn't hard to find. Her marriage record to Thomas Gardner Bartlett appeared almost immediately, revealing that her maiden name is Wright. Included on the record were her parents Richard and Mary Wright, and her line continues to move.
But the victory of the day BY FAR was Birdie M. Doyle.
Doyle is her married name, and she has been stuck like that for YEARS! And when I say years, I'm talking since 2008. I started to lose hope that I would ever get enough information to find her parents.
So I went after records for a her oldest son, James H Doyle. And lo and behold, this was the answer I was searching for.
James Howard Doyle appeared immediately in a set of birth records from West Virginia.
Upon further inspection of the image, I saw first that his father's full name was included. And my heart skipped a beat. Could it be that--
YES! Birdie's full name was there too!
Birdie May Price
Price. PRICE! Talk about a pearl of great price, you fink of a last name you!
So I set off straightaway to see if I could FINALLY get a marriage record to appear, and--
DOUBLE WHAMMY! She appears!
And wouldn't you know it, that explains a lot!
I was never going to find this marriage record without Birdie's maiden name. I never would have thought to substitute Dale or Dayl for Doyle. And fortune among fortunes, Birdie's parents are included in this record too!
So, after a LONG wait and a lot of patient perseverance, George and Mary Price have finally joined my family tree.
This kind of breakthrough requires celebration. Allow me to play you the song of my people...