52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, Week 4: A Theory in Progress

This week, for Amy Johnson Crow's  52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, we are to talk about a genealogical theory we are working on.  This one is not pleasant, but it's been nagging at me.

In the obituary for my granduncle Edmund McKee Reed (1893-1921), who died in Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan, there is mention of Edmund's brother, my grandfather Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Reed, who also died in Detroit.(1)

Frank died 20 October 1917, when he was hit by a yard engine in the Wabash Railroad yard in Detroit.(2)

 His death certificate states the cause of death as "crushing injuries to head, run over by steam engine."(3)  The mention of Frank's death in Edmund's obituary states, "It will be remembered that a brother of [the] deceased, Frank Reed, was decapitated in an accident in Detroit about two years ago."

This raises some questions . . . 

Frank Reed was married to Ruth Nave.  They wed 25 November 1913.  Their first child, a son named Donald Francis Reed, was born 19 May 1913.  A tad early.  Donald was followed in making his entry into the world by sisters Margaret Elizabeth in 1914 and Martha Shideler, my mother, in 1916.  There is no way of knowing for sure what their home life was like.  The only photograph I have of my grandmother Ruth is one taken about 1920, with her and Donald and Margaret, Martha having already been taken from Ruth by the Reed family and placed with Frank's oldest brother Perry and his wife Mary LeSourd after Frank's death.  In that photo, Ruth has a very slight smile, but to me her eyes hold a sadness.  My Aunt Margaret, Ruth's other daughter, told me that Ruth had lived a sad life.  There might have been stress in the marriage caused by the rapid arrival of three children, close in age, and all the exhaustion and tension involved in child care.  The possibly unhappy couple had not begun their marriage with time alone to explore their relationship and engage in any family planning. 

 I just wonder if Frank saw no other way out of a stressful and possibly deteriorating situation except suicide.

Is it possible to be partially or totally decapitated when hit by a railroad yard engine while standing up, walking, or running?  Did he cross in front of the engine, badly underestimating its speed and/or distance from him?  Or did he, in a moment of despair and psychic pain, lay his head down on a rail with the engine bearing down on him?

 I want to find out if any records of the Wabash Railroad exist, and if, in those records, there is a report on the incident.  Would the Detroit police department have had any cause to investigate the death?  Where would a report issued by that department on the incident be housed, if it exists?  

I just would like to know.

(1)  "Obit of Edmund M. Reed" Newspapers.com, database with images, The Pharos-Tribune (Logansport, Indiana, United States) 28 Jan 1921, page 6, Imaged: https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-pharos-tribune-obit-of-edmund-m-ree/189449669/ (accessed 21 January 2026).

(2) "Engine Kills a Switchman," Newspapers.com, database with images.  The Pharos-Tribune (Logansport, Indiana, United States) 22 October 1917, page 3.  Imaged: https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-pharos-tribune-death-notice/95893929/ (Accessed last 26 January 2026).

(3)  State of Michigan, Department of State, Division of Vital Statistics, Transcript of Certificate of Death, Benjamin Franklin Reed.  Verified by Glenn Copeland, State Registrar, Michigan Department of Community Health, Lansing, Michigan, 3 April 2009.  Registered no. 10695. 

Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Unusual Cause of Death

Hey, I'm actually posting this on Saturday!  It's time for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun and this Saturday's task is to answer:

1)  What is the most unusual cause of death you have discovered for your ancestors?

2) Tell us about the most unusual cause of death you found in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook Status  post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.  

I would venture to say that having one's head crushed by a railroad-yard donkey engine is rather unusual, in the grand scheme of things.  That was the cause of death of my maternal grandfather, Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Reed [1].  The death occurred in Detroit, Michigan, 20 October 1917, two months before my mother's first birthday.  The specific cause is entered on the death certificate as "crushing injuries to head; run over by steam engine."    

My grandfather and grandmother were married 25 November 1913, and had three children [2].  The first child, my uncle Don Reed, was born seven months before the wedding.  According to my mother's sister, my aunt Margaret, the Reed family "ganged up" on my grandmother, Ruth [Nave] Reed, and took the two younger children, daughters, away from their mother and had them adopted within the family, by two of their uncles and their wives.  They would have looked down on her, following the ethos of the times, for "loose morals" in having engaged in premarital relations.  They probably also were not happy with her working as a telephone operator, as she had a mother and a son to support.  In those days, "decent" women stayed home rather than being in the workforce.  

My aunt also said that my grandmother had a sad life, and indeed she did.   You may read her story here .  Married to a woman he loved but his family didn't, with three children in a rather short span of years and the animosity of his family toward his wife, it could have been a stressful time for my grandfather as well as for my grandmother.  The one photo I have of my grandmother shows her with a sad expression on her face.  So I wonder if perhaps it all got too much for my grandfather, and in a moment of utter despair and hopelessness, he decided to lay his head down on the railroad track.  How many ways can one get one's head crushed by a railroad engine?

He could have tripped and fallen.  I wonder if any record exists with the railroad or in some other office that would have more detail?  This was before some of the more common and useful railroad records existed.  Any suggestions would be welcome. 

[1] State of Michigan, Department of State, Division of Vital Statistics, Transcript of Certificate of Death, Benjamin Franklin Reed.  Verified by Glenn Copeland, State Registrar, Michigan Department of Community Health, Lansing, Michigan, 3 April 2009.  Registered no. 10695.

[2]  "St. Joseph, Indiana, United States records," images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org /ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-LBLF-9DV5?view=index : Jan 25, 2025), image 108 of 818; Indiana. County Court (St. Joseph County).  Citing Marriage Record 1912-1913, Vol. 25, page 88.

 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 35 -- All Mixed Up

This week's blog prompt presented by Amy Johnson Crow, 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, is "All Mixed Up."  We're to blog on which ancestors get confused with other people.  I have a good case, and I have to be blunt and charge FamilySearch.org for being a big cause of this mixup.

My mother was an intra-family adoption.  Her birth parents were Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Reed (1888-1917) and Ruth Nave (1892-1951).  Frank Reed was killed in a railroad accident when my mother was not quite one year old.  The Reeds had issues with Ruth Nave, and in the words of my mother's birth sister, my aunt Margaret, they "ganged up on her" and took my mother and aunt Margaret away from her and had two of Frank's brothers and their wives adopt the girls.  Their brother, my Uncle Don, the oldest of the three, stayed with his mother, as he was 16 years old.

My mother was adopted by her uncle Perry Wilmer Reed (1885-1937) and his wife Mary LeSourd (a variant spelling) (1889-1978).  And here's where the mixup begins.  Many people have posted to the tree on FamilySearch that Perry and Mary Reed were my mother's actual parents.  This is wrong, and I have mom's birth certificate citing Frank and Ruth Reed as her birth parents, and a copy of the final adoption decree recording mom's adoption by Perry and Mary Reed.

I have tried numerous times to correct this.  I put the correct information with source citations on the FamilySearch tree, and come back only to find that someone has replaced my correct information with the incorrect attribution of my mother's parentage to Perry and Mary Reed, usually without source citations.

I have given up on that FamilySearch tree because I am just mortally tired of correcting misinformation and providing source citations, only to find that someone has put back the wrong information.  I love FamilySearch for the access to documents, and for their wonderful and very instructive wiki.  In those two aspects, it is a fount of information par excellence.

But don't even try to induce me to go back to using their tree.  I'm done with it.

However, I'm not totally down on collaboration.  I am a user of WikiTree, mostly because they do require, encourage, and endorse good source citations on their tree.  But even at that, when I get notices of all sorts of famous people I may be descended from, some of them trace through Perry and Mary Reed rather than my mother's actual parents, Frank and Ruth Reed.  

In the background, for those of you who are Star Wars fans, I hear the voice of Admiral Akbar.

"It's a trap!"

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Descendants of 2nd great-grandparents

One of the genealogy web postings I have always enjoyed appears in Randy Seaver's prompts under the title Saturday Night Genealogy Fun .  I'm a bit late with this one; it's been busy around here!  So, without further ado:

1)  How complete is your family tree?  Do you have information about your cousins  - both close and more distant?  Today's challenge is to take one set of your 2nd great-grandparents and make a Descendants List (using your genealogy management program - e.g., Family Tree Maker, RootsMagic, etc.)

2) Tell us about your choice of 2nd great-grandparents, and tell us approximately how many descendants of them that you have in your family tree database. Share your answers, and perhaps a chart, on your own blog or in a Facebook post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

 

Here is mine: it's rather long, and I apologize for the fuzziness of the image, but I just spent two hours trying to get it to work at all . . . I have NO talent in the graphic arts.

 

 

 

As you can see, the Reeds were indeed fruitful, and multiplied, until you get down to my grandparents, Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Reed and Ruth Nave.  They were married in 1913, and Frank was killed in a railroad accident in 1917.  Ruth remarried twice, but had no more children.  I have only 33 Reeds and spouses and children in my database, because I have not been able to work on it for a goodly while.  I have not by a long shot finished delving into all the collateral ancestors here.  I have no idea how many descendants of Charles Reed and Clarissa Haney Wright there may have been, up to the present time.  I have met only a few of my cousins, and very few of my uncles and aunts, and only two grandaunts. 
 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2024 - Week 18 - Love Story

 My grandmother Ruth Nave Reed Pennington White must have been lucky at cards, because she was unlucky in love.

November 25, 1913, she married Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Reed in St. Joseph County, Indiana, probably in South Bend, where Ruth lived with her mother.  Frank Reed's family lived in Logansport, in Cass County, Indiana.  They had three children: my uncle Donald Reed, my aunt Margaret Reed, and my mother, Martha Reed.  Frank Reed worked for a railroad as a switchman.  He was killed 22 October 1917 when he was hit by a railroad-yard donkey engine.  He was 29 years old.  Frank Reed and Ruth Nave were my grandparents, my mother's parents.

Sometime after 1920, Ruth Nave married William Walter Pennington.  I don't have their marriage record yet, and haven't found it online.  A cousin of mine lives in Logansport, Indiana, where my grandma and William Pennington lived, and has offered to search for that record in local records the next time he goes downtown.  William Pennington died 4 September 1927 in Logansport.  In an awful irony, he, too, was 29 years old when he died.

14 August 1942, Ruth Pennington and Harold Blaine White took out a marriage license.  I have not yet found their marriage documents.  Harold White was an unstable person, as far as I have been able to find.  He cites himself as having several different jobs, from farming to railroad fireman to telephone cable splicer for the Bell System (AT&T).  In census records and on his World War I and II draft registration forms, his employment is spotty and, on the censuses, his income minimal.  Ruth, his wife, made up to three or four times as much as he did, and she had a fairly steady record when she was working.  She was a telephone operator.  His pattern of job-hopping (if he really held such jobs at all), the periods of unemployment reflected in censuses, and the minimal income he reported, may indicate his mental instability.  He died in 1960, in a mental institution.

Ruth Nave Reed Pennington White died in 1951.  The informant on her death certificate was her husband, Harold White.  One thing he did may have indicated some caring for his wife: she is buried next to my grandfather, her first husband, Benjamin Franklin "Frank" Reed.

A to Z Challenge 2024 - Professionally Speaking - F is for Farmer

 It would seem logical that most early arrivals to New England became farmers by necessity.  They had to have a way to feed themselves.  It wasn't any different for Samuel Packard, my 8x-great-grandfather.  He arrived with a wife and one child in 1638 at Hingham, Plymouth Colony.  Not long after, he removed his family to Weymouth, and finally settled in Bridgewater.  By the time of his death in 1684, he had acquired a goodly amount of land, much of it farmed.  

Much later, my great-great grandfather Nelson Reed McKee was listed in the 1860 census as being a farmer in Allen County, Indiana.  Either he did not succeed as a farmer, or he just found that he did not like the occupation, for in the 1870 census, he is listed as a silversmith.  At that time, he was living with his wife and two children in Portland, Jay County, Indiana.  

A several-times great-granduncle was a farmer in Maryland.  His name was Jean-Pierre LeSueur, and he had come over from France to fight on the side of the American colonies in our Revolution.  His descendant, my great-granduncle Levi Curtis LeSourd (the spelling varied over time) was also a farmer, in Indiana.  He and his family lived in a small town called Sleeth, in Carroll County. named for the family of Levi's wife Rachel Anna Sleeth.

Harold Blaine White was the third husband of my grandmother Ruth Nave.  Her first husband, Benjamin Franklin Reed, was my grandfather.  He died in a railroad accident in 1917.  Harold White was raised on a farm, and his first occupation was as a farmer.  From what I have learned of him, he was not a success as a farmer.  He apparently was not much of a success at much of anything, because he attributed to himself several occupations, but in each census in which he was listed, he is shown as unemployed.  His earnings for the year, as shown in censuses, were much less than that of my grandmother.

Farming did not survive as an occupation in my family into the 20th century.  

The Search for William W. Pennington

After my mother died, I wanted to try to get more information on my grandmother Ruth Nave.  Her first husband, Benjamin Franklin ("Frank") Reed was my grandfather.  After he died in a railroad accident in 1917, my grandmother married again.  She later had a third husband, Harold White.  To get more information, I visited my aunt Margaret in Orlando.  She told me that she and my mother had been adopted by two of Frank Reed's brothers.  She had been adopted by Don Francis Reed and his wife Grace McElroy.  My mother had been adopted by Perry Wilmer Reed and his wife Mary LeSourd.  Aunt Margaret indicated that the Reeds had not been fond of Ruth Nave, and had "ganged up on her" to take the two younger of her children away from her.  Her oldest child, her son Donald Reed, was 16 years old at the time, and the family left him with his mother.  

My mother never talked about her mother, except once.  After my cousin Dale, Aunt Margaret's daughter, told me when we were both 10 years old that Aunt Margaret and my mother had been adopted, I asked Mom about it.  She tersely informed me that it was true, and her parents' names had been Frank Reed and Ruth Nave.  After my mother died, I found among her papers a copy of her original birth certificate and a copy of the final decree of adoption, which bore out what she had told me.

 When I talked to aunt Margaret during my visit, she told me that Ruth Nave had been married twice more after my grandfather died.  Her second husband had borne the surname Pennington, and her third husband was named Harold White.  I had known this latter fact, having obtained a death certificate of my grandmother in 2006 based on what little information Mom told me when I asked her about her being adopted.  Ruth Nave had died in 1951 in Logansport, Indiana, under the name Ruth White.  The informant on the death certificate was her husband, Harold White.  I found my grandmother's grave at the Mount Hope Cemetery in Logansport.

Earlier this year, after I retired and was finally able to work on my own family history once again, I got curious about my grandmother's second husband.  I have not yet found a marriage certificate for them.  The only other possibility was that he had been buried in the same cemetery where Ruth Nave was buried, Mount Hope.  I went to an independent online index of burials and found, among seven graves under the name of Pennington, only two which predated the year of my grandmother's death, 1951.  One was a woman, and the other was William W. Pennington, who died in 1927 at the age of 29.  I searched for a death certificate, and found the record of the death of William Walter Pennington.  The informant was his wife, Ruth Pennington.  From there, I found a listing in a Logansport city directory for Ruth Pennington, widow of William.  She was living at an address I had previously found for her, which lent credence to her being the informant and William Walter Pennington being her second husband. 

 There is an irony, which I wonder if my grandmother realized.  Both Frank Reed and William Pennington were 29 years old when they died.

     

 The Many Birth Years of Harold White (1885?-1960)

Harold Blaine White, my maternal grandmother's third husband, though not my grandfather, was born in Indiana.   The intrigue has been in trying to determine in what year he was born.  Sources range from 1880 to 1887.   

I first found Harold White in this investigation in the 1900 census, enumerated at age 15 in his father's household, a farm in Kosciusko County, Indiana.[1]  His birth month and year are given as April 1885.  The enumeration day was 18 June 1900, so his birthday had already passed.  This information is internally consistent. 

Next time Harold White shows up is with a stated age of 21 on 24 November 1905, when he took out a marriage license with 18-year-old Blanch Stockmyer in Kosciusko County. [2]  He gives his birth date as 26 April 1884.  In Indiana at that time, the age for a male to marry without parental consent was 21.  The age for a female to marry without consent was 18.  If Harold White was actually born in 1885 rather than 1884, he would have been 20 years old rather than 21, and would have had to obtain his father's consent.  It is likely that he did not want to, or could not, obtain such consent, so he lied about his age. 

On 13 May 1912, Harold and Cora White (his second wife), were presented with a new son, Eugene, by the noble stork.[3]  Harold's age appears as 25, making his birth year 1887.  The informant is not named on the birth certificate, but it is likely that the informant was the mother, whose age is listed as 18.  She may have been unclear as to her husband's actual age or his birth year.  The reporting of Harold's age on this child's birth certificate in 1912 is in direct conflict with his marriage license application in 1905, on which he gave his birth year as 1884, probably so he could present himself as being 21, of legal age to marry without parental consent.  It also conflicts with the 1930 census, detailed below, on which he is recorded with an age at first marriage of 25, a figure which is at odds with the 1905 marriage information. [See further discussion below, at 1930 census.]

A daughter, Violet, was born to Harold and Cora 13 December 1913.[4]  Harold's age is shown to be 27, which would yield a birth year of 1886.  Cora's age is given as 20.  Again, the mother was probably the informant on this information.

Maxine, the third child of the Whites was born 18 April 1916.[5]  On this registration, Harold's age is 30 and Cora's is 23.  The birth took place before Harold's birthday that year, making him 31 on that birthday, so his birth year comes out to 1885.  Cora may have been the informant.

Harold White did his patriotic duty on 12 September 1918, and registered for the draft.[6]  He gave his age as 33, and his birth date as 26 April 1885.  He would have been asked by the draft board member to answer the questions on the registration, so the information here came from Harold himself.  There is no conflict between the date of the event and Harold's birth year as stated.

Harold White has not yet been found in the 1910 or 1920 censuses.

The information in the 1930 census on Harold White's age and the age given for his first marriage, 25, provides an internal inconsistency, and a conflict with other records, most notably his 1905 marriage license application.[7]  In the 1930 census, Harold's age is given as 43.  The enumeration date was 9 April, before Harold's birthday, so at that birthday, he would have been 44.  This leaves us with 1886 as his birth year.  This is one of only two documents among those so far found that suggest 1886 as his birth year, though neither of them specifically state that it was.  The other document leading to 1886 as Harold's birth year, though not stating it outright, is the birth certificate of the couple's daughter Violet.  This might indicate an informant other than Harold himself.  Likewise, the calculation of his age at first marriage being 25, subtracted from his marriage year of 1905, draw us to 1880 as his birth year.  Compared to all the other documents so far found, this year is an outlier, way out of line with the rest of the information at present known.  This, too, seems to indicate that the informant on this census was someone other than Harold White.

For the 1940 census, enumerators were instructed to place an "X" in a circle next to the name of the informant for a household, if a member of the household was the informant for a particular household or family (as a household could include more than one family).  The enumerator for the section of the census in which Harold White was enumerated in 1940 did not place that mark on any of the households he enumerated.  It would be a stretch to imagine that, for pages and pages of census information, all the informants had been other than household or family members.  Thus, the information recorded by this particular enumerator is no more reliable than that on any other census in any other year.

 Harold's age is recorded on the 1940 census as 54.[8]  The enumeration day was 9 April, before Harold's birthday that year, so he was 55 on that birthday, 26 April.  That would point to 1885 as his birth year.  

On 27 April 1942, Harold White registered for the World War II draft.[9]  This registration date was one day after his birthday, 26 April, and he gave his age as 55.  The resulting calculation yields a birth year of 1887.  

Harold White married my twice-widowed grandmother, Ruth [Nave] Reed Pennington, in  August of 1932.[10]  On the marriage license, he gives his birth date as 26 April 1885.

On the 1950 census, the enumerator failed to record the enumeration date.[11]  However, moving back through the census sheets taken by this enumerator, Nellie Reed, shows her beginning her enumerations on 23 May.  Harold White's age is stated as 65, and as the census was taken on him after his birthday, his birth year comes out to 1885.

Finally, there is his death certificate.[12] Harold died 25 December 1960, in an institutional setting.  No informant is named on his death certificate.  Only his birth year is given: 1885.  He was 75 years old.  

So, in what year was Harold White born?

1880 - Only one document leads by inference to this outlying year.  The 1930 census states his age at first marriage as 25.  Subtracting 25 years from the year of first marriage, 1905, yields 1880.  However, his first marriage took place on 24 November 1905, and he reported his age at that time as 21, though this may have been a falsification to avoid having to ask for his father's permission to marry.  By its direct conflict with the 1905 marriage license and the fact that it is out of the range of the other possible birth years, 1880 does not appear to be a good candidate for Harold's birth year.

1884 - Harold's stated birth date on the 1905 marriage license application is 26 April 1884.  Nowhere else is the year 1884 stated or implied to be his birth year.  This single appearance of that possible birth year and the likelihood that Harold lied about his age in 1905 to get around needing parental permission to marry make it unlikely that Harold was born in 1884.

1885 -  If we go by the old standard of "preponderance of evidence," 1885 wins hands down as Harold's birth year.  This birth year is supported by the 1900 census, the birth certificate of his daughter Maxine, Harold's World War I draft registration, the 1940 census, his application to marry Ruth Pennington, the 1950 census, and his death certificate, though this last document is of highly questionable reliability.  Seven documents out of the twelve so far discovered favor 1885, but that does not yet put the lock on it because the other contenders for Harold's birth year cannot be completely disproven.

1886 - Support for this possible birth year is found in Harold's daughter  Maxine's birth certificate, and the 1930 census.  That is only two of the twelve documents surveyed.  1886 is less likely to be Harold's birth year than is 1885.

1887 - The year 1887 shows up or can be inferred from Harold's son Eugene's birth certificate, and the World War II draft.  1887 is also less likely than 1885 to be Harold's birth year.

So we are left with no more than the strong possibility that Harold was born in 1885 rather than any of the other suggested birth years.  The search continues for more documents, and it is possible that the best we can hope for is to be able to say with a modicum of qualified assurance that Harold White was born in 1885.

There is one consistent element in this whole confusion:  Those documents that make definite birth date statements all agree on one thing:  Harold was born on 26 April of whatever year the documents may mention or suggest.

NOTES:

[1] Census Place: Troy, Whitley, Indiana; Roll: 414; Page: 8; Enumeration District: 0114; FHL microfilm: 1240414.  Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1900. T623, ED 114, Sheet 8, Dwelling 172, Family 174.

[2]  "Indiana Marriages, 1811-2019," database with images, FamilySearch(https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GPXX-938Z?cc=1410397&wc=Q8SH-5TM%3A962985201%2C963051301 : 5 February 2016), Kosciusko > 1905-1906 Volume N > image 86 of 223; Indiana Commission on Public Records, Indianapolis.  (accessed 15 November 2023.)

[3]  Indiana, Birth Certificates, 1907-1940, Indiana Archives and Records Administration; Indianapolis, Indiana; Birth; Year: 1912; Roll: 002. Ancestry.com, https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/60871/images/40474_358007-01488?pId=155049355.  (accessed 15 November 2023.)

[4] Indiana, Birth Certificates, 1907-1940, Indiana Archives and Records Administration; Indianapolis, Indiana; Birth; Year: 1913; Roll: 002.  Ancestry.com, https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/60871/images/40474_357402-02175?pId=2058418. (accessed 15 November 2023.)

[5] Indiana, Birth Certificates, 1907-1940, Indiana Archives and Records Administration; Indianapolis, Indiana; Births; Year: 1916; Roll: 003.  Ancestry.com, https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/60871/images/40474_357898-00914?pId=3178908. (accessed 15 November 2023.)

[6]  "United States World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918", database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:7H1X-W9T2 : 29 December 2021), Harold Blaine White, 1917-1918.

[7]  Ancestry.com, Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2002.Original data - United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, ED 9-14, sheet 11B, Dwelling 304, Family 333.  https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/6224/images/4584674_00740?pId=117850519. (accessed 15 November 2023.)

[8]   Ancestry.com, Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.Original data - United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1940. T627, Sheet 4A, Household #78. https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/2442/images/M-T0627-01030-00378?pId=55811125 (accessed 15 November 2023.)

[9] U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942. The National Archives At St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Record Group Title: Records of the Selective Service System; Record Group Number: 147. Ancestry.com, https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/1002/images/2wwii_2371837-4488?pId=8813559.  (accessed 15 November 2023.)

[10]   Newspapers.com - The South Bend Tribune - 14 Aug 1942 - Page 29.  Notice of marriage license application, Harold White and Ruth Pennington.  https://www.newspapers.com/clip/118136363/marriage-of-white-pennln/?xid=637 .  (accessed 15 November 2023).  [Actual marriage record not located yet.]

[11]  Ancestry.com.  United States of America, Bureau of the Census; Washington, D.C.; Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950; Record Group: Records of the Bureau of the Census, 1790-2007; Record Group Number: 29; Residence Date: 1950; Home in 1950: Tippecanoe, Kosciusko.  ED 43-24, Sheet 49 (corrected from 121),  Dwelling # 581, Family 156.  https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/62308/images/43290879-Indiana-230908-0051?pId=131170156.  (accessed 15 November 2023.)

[12]  Ancestry.com. Indiana, Death Certificates, 1899-2011, Indiana Archives and Records Administration; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Death Certificates; Year: 1960; Roll: 15.  https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/60716/images/44494_350865-00496?pId=1728451. (accessed 15 November 2023.)

No calculators were harmed in the creation of this blog.  However, one did get a bit testy after the 753rd calculation.