Such was the case for Mrs. Lavina "Fannie" Lovelace, wife of William E. Lovelace. Born Frances Warson, she married her husband in Rockingham County, North Carolina on 27 February 1855. Most (if not all) of their children were born in Rockingham County. Some time in the 1880s or early 1890s, they moved to Alamance County, North Carolina. They settled in the Graham/Haw River area, where they remained until their deaths. They are both buried in Linwood Cemetery.
Because of the missing 1890 census, the only census in which their younger children would have appeared together, it would be easy to assume all of the children have been located. The 1900 census also isn't much help, because of how the family or informant answered the question. Fannie had no less than eight children by 1900, with at least one of them being deceased. When asked by the census taker how many children she had and how many were living, the informant answered for the two she had living at home. If the informant was a neighbor, that would have been a reasonable response, albeit an incorrect one.
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| 1910 U.S. census, Alamance County, North Carolina, population schedule, Haw River Township, p. 16-A (written), dwelling 292, family 197, William E. Lovelace and Lavina F. Lovelace family; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 6 Mar 2017); citing NARA Microfilm Roll: T624_1095. |
The 1910 census, however, paints a more accurate picture. It says that William and Levina had 11 total children, with eight still living in 1910. Up until recently, I had documented from these (and other) census records only eight total children, with one deceased.
- Cora A. Lovelace Doyle (1861-1901)
- Sallie L. Lovelace Ziegler (1866- ?)
- Mary M. Lovelace Burch (1869-1936)
- Etta D. Lovelace Ezell (1871-1945)
- Rhoda Lovelace Ezell (1873-1967)
- William W. Lovelace (1875- ?)
- Kate Lovelace Stapleton (1877-1958)
- Ida C. Lovelace (1879-1965)
According to the numbers given in 1910, I was missing one living child and two deceased children. This also gives me a reasonable confirmation of what I have long suspected about William Lovelace being among those deceased. But how to find the living child, especially if it happens to be a daughter? If she was born in the early 1880s, she would have been of marrying age by 1900, which would explain why she would be missing.
At least, that should have been my logic. But I was actually missing the 1910 census until today. Ancestry's index was only mildly wrong until someone came along and "corrected" it, making it worse. In the hands of the census taker, Levina F Lovelace became "Levina F Lovlass." To the transcribers, it morphed into Levina F Lauless. At last, it was "corrected" to read "Lenine F Laulass," making it all but unobtainable via the search form. I eventually had to manually bring it up by searching all names beginning with L in Graham and Haw River in Alamance County.
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| In the immortal words of Adele, "If you're gonna let me down, let me down gently" |
No, the confirmation about this missing daughter was much more luck on my part than that level of actual skill. It came as I was exploring newspaper articles on Newspapers.com. Up until now, I haven't been very impressed with their selection. But with recent acquisitions, their database has become a much better resource for many of the areas related to my research. Alamance County, North Carolina in particular has a great collection of papers there. Having discovered that, I was jumping around on their newspaper location map, systematically checking all of the local papers close to Graham. Thankfully I had long since untangled the incorrect Loveless spelling I had previously been using, or I might have missed them.
Searching for Lovelace on in Graham's The Alamance Gleaner and The Twice a Week Dispatch of Burlington reveals quite a few treasures. In the Dispatch of 31 January 1912, we find an announcement in the Haw River items that William E. Lovelace "continues very feeble he is an old vet." He later passed away in early February of that same year. I'm hoping that closer examination will produce a death notice.
But of greater relevance to the question of their children, I found announcements from the Gleaner for not one, but two family reunions. The first was printed 24 August 1916. The second was three years later on 20 November 1919.
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| The Alamance Gleaner, digital images, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/title_3265/the_alamance_gleaner/ : 6 March 2017) citing "Reunion of Lovelace Family" (Graham, NC) The Alamance Gleaner, 24 Aug 1916, p. 3, col. 1. |
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| The Alamance Gleaner, digital images, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/title_3265/the_alamance_gleaner/ : 6 March 2017) citing "Family Reunion" (Graham, NC) The Alamance Gleaner, 20 Nov 1919, p. 3, col. 2. |
Both give a list of the surviving female siblings of this family, under their married names. Notice the name of Ellen Crompton. I've paired her up here already with Mrs. W. C. Browning of Greensboro because they're the same person. But when I searched through marriage records for Ellen Lovelace Crumpton after finding the 1916 announcement, I didn't find squat. I suspected it was because Crompton was spelled wrong. After a while, I got frustrated and decided to regroup. I found the second announcement, and decided to explore the theory that Ellen Crompton and Mrs. W. C. Browning were the same person. But to prove it, I would need additional records.
| Sibling List, 1916 | Sibling List, 1919 |
| Mrs. A. J. Burch of Spencer, NC | Mrs. A. J. Burch of Spencer, NC |
| Mrs. T. M. Ezell of Graham, NC | Mrs. T. M. Ezell of Graham, NC |
| Mrs. C. L. Ezell of Graham, NC | Mrs. Chas. Ezell of Graham, NC |
| Mrs. Leroy Zeagler of Jackson, MS | Mrs. L. Ziegler of Jackson, MS |
| Mrs. Kate Stapleton | Mrs. W. W. Stapleton of Greensboro, NC |
| Mrs. Ellen Crompton of Greensboro, NC (and daughter, Fannie) | Mrs. W. C. Browning of Greensboro, NC |
| Mrs B. M. Cheek | Mrs. B. M. Cheek of Graham, NC |
My first thought was to look for Greensboro city directories. I've been around the block a few times in North Carolina, and had the vague sense that they were around. As it turns out, Greensboro is an awesome place to look for city directories. Multiple websites and repositories have published them, and they cover a pretty consistent window from 1879-1963. Since the first family reunion was in 1916, I decided to check there first, and branch forward in time. Under Crompton, I found nothing. But under Crumplin, I found two familiar names:
Mrs. Ellin Crumplin h 5 12th W. O. Mills
Miss Fannie Crumplin h 5 12th W. O. Mills
Out of curiosity, I decided to look under Browning to see what I could find. I wasn't disappointed.
William C. Browning, weaver h 64 20th W. O. Mills
I checked the surrounding directories for 1912, 1913, 1917, 1918, and 1920. Ellen and Fannie do not show up in any earlier entries under Crumplin or its variants. They also disappear in 1917 and 1918, with no further appearance of Fannie. William Clarence Browning appears consistently in each set of directories. In 1920, in the first set of directories to use this parenthetical convention, his line changes.
W Clarence Browning (wife) mill head h 19 12th, W. O. Mills
To be sure, I checked the North Carolina marriage records on Ancestry.com for Ellen Lovelace Crumplin and William Clarence Browning. Almost immediately, their marriage record appeared.
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| "North Carolina, Marriage Records, 1741-2011," database, Ancestry.com (http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=60548: accessed 6 Mar 2017), citing Guilford County, North Carolina, marriage bond, (1918), William C. Browning and Ellen Crumpton; North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, NC. |
This time, Ellen appears with the surname Crumpton, married 15 Jun 1918 to William C. Browning, son of William H. and Ethel Browning. (Note: William H. Browning appears on the city directories with his son, also connected to W. O. Mills as a mill head.)
The marriage record index on Ancestry lists Ellen's parents as "Milon" and "Lizzie" Lovelace. Examining the image, however, the names appear as a mangled form of William, and "Fannie."
The 1890 census is a lost cause for many. But that doesn't mean the information it held is also gone forever. Even if it means wading through a river of misspelled or mistranscribed names. Not having a correct name to search with never has to keep us from filling in the gaps.