Genealogy Story - Tracing female ancestors

My father’s parents divorced when he (Vernon Russell) was fairly young.  He lived for a while with his mother, then moved in with his father, Erskine, (who was then living with my father’s grandparents, Louis and Helen), then when Erskine remarried my father remained with his grandparents.  However, I noted in my ancestor research that Helen was my Louis’ second wife.  And besides my grandfather’s siblings, they also had living with them for several years a Juanita Woodcock who was labeled a grand-daughter.  From other relatives, I learned that Helen’s name before marrying Louis was Waldron, and that Juanita was her grand-daughter from that prior marriage.  In tracing Helen through the various census records, here is what I found:

1900 census (New Milford, CT): Mary Jane Madigan, Lola [Madigan?] (grand-daughter), Eva [Madigan?] (grand-daughter), Margaret Waldron (grand-daughter), Helen Waldron (daughter) [married for 5 years]

1910 census (Waterbury, CT): Louis Russell, Helen Russell, Erskine Russell (son)

1920 census: Louis Russell, Helen Russell, Loretta Russell (daughter), Pauline Russell (daughter), Juanita Woodcock (grandchild, age 6-1/2, born in MA)

1930 census: Louis Russell, Helen Russell, Erskine Russell (son), Juanita Woodcock (grand-daughter)

1940 census: Louis Russell, Helen Russell, Vernon Russell (grandson)

This tells me a lot about Helen:

·         -  Her maiden name was actually Madigan (from the 1900 census where she is living with her mother (and verified from the 1880 census – not shown))

·       -   She was married not twice, but three times (from the 1910 census)

·        -  In the 1900 census she had four children, three of whom were living – Lola, Eva, and Margaret –Margaret’s last name was Waldron, but the last names of the other two girls are not given in the census (unless it is Madigan and she married someone with the same last name)

So, while I don’t have the typical problem of finding the maiden name of an ancestor, I do have a whole bunch of questions:

(1)   Who was Helen’s husband (last name of Waldron) from whom she was apparently separated in the 1900 census (since she is listed as married for 5 years, but her husband is not living with her)?

(2)   Who was Helen’s first husband, and the father of Lola and Eva?  We know he was from New York from the 1900 census, but nothing else about him.

(3)   Can we find the deceased daughter/son from the 1900 census?

(4)   Who are the parents of Juanita Woodcock?

Finding the answers to these questions taught me a lot about the different kinds of searching one can do in ancestry.com and showed me a number of places that one can find answers.

The answer to (1) turned out to be the easiest to find.  I was able to determine that Waldron was a fairly common name in New Milford, CT at the time, so I tried looking for a Waldron somewhere in that area who could have been Helen’s husband.  Looking in the 1900 census records for Litchfield County, I found him in Bethlehem, CT, just the next town over. (Lewis Waldron, servant, married 5 years)

As you can see, Lewis Waldron is also married for the past 5 years and is only a few years younger than Helen.  Why they are separated is unknown, but sometime later they evidently divorced as Helen is remarried (for a third time) by 1910.

However, after that initial success, my next series of searches were totally futile – yielding either no answer, or so many possibilities that there was no way to find the right one.  I tried all kinds of combinations: Lola Madigan, Lola Waldron, Lola in New Milford, Lola in Litchfield county, Juanita Woodcock, Lola Woodcock, Eva with all the same combinations, etc, etc.  Nothing was working.  I was ready to throw in the towel when I finally found a combination that worked – and what a treasure trove it turned out to be. 

I had tried looking for Juanita Woodcock, born in Massachusetts in 1913-1914 without success, but I finally dropped the Juanita and just looked for a Woodcock.  Here is what turned up:

Wanita Eleanor Woodcock, born to George A (Woodcock) and Lola K Pulver

Obviously the person who recorded her birth didn’t know anything about Spanish names as it is recorded as “Wanita” instead of “Juanita”!  But now I have Lola’s maiden name (and the last name of Helen’s first husband as well as a whole bunch of more searches I can try.

Now we know that Juanita was Lola’s daughter and can verify that she really is Helen’s grand-daughter.  With the answer to (4) out of the way, we can concentrate on (2) and (3) again.

First let’s look for information on George A Woodcock.  Here he is in the 1910 census:

Woodcock – George, Kate (wife), Lola (daughter), Ethel (daughter), Sarah (mother), Eva Pulver (sister-in-law)

Interestingly Lola is going by her middle name, Kate – the “K” in the birth record above (this is also the reason why I couldn’t find a match when looking for Lola Woodcock – even though she has a daughter of that name, I had put an approximate birthyear in the search [without an “exact”] but that was enough to screen out their young daughter).  We also see that they have other children besides Juanita (who is not yet born).  Also, Eva Pulver, Lola’s sister is living with them as well.  So we have additional verification that Lola and Eva were children of Helen by her first husband, ____ Pulver.

Finally, searching for other information on the Pulver family, I came across the following grave:

Iva M Pulver, died June 22, 1892 (twin daughter of Edward and Helen A, age 5 months)

Now we know the name of the deceased offspring of Helen – a twin sister to Eva (Eva and Iva, how nice!)  And we finally have the first name of Helen’s first husband as well.  All my initial questions are now answered.

I’ve learned a lot through this search: looking in adjoining towns; getting information based on other people in the home and their relationships; how people going by middle names can thwart your searches; how even notes on grave records can be beneficial, how removing known information from your search can help (removing the Juanita in the birth record search, removing the birth year would have enabled me to find Lola Woodcock because of her daughter), how you should just keep trying other ways even when nothing seems to be working.

Everything here seems to be wrapped up neatly and consistent, except for one item.  In the 1900 census Helen is shown as having four children of whom three are living.  We have verified the names of all four, including Iva who died at 5 months of age.  But the 1910 census shows her as having had 5 children of whom 3 are living.  Who is the 5^th child?  And who is the father – Lewis Waldron (to whom she is married in 1900), or Louis Russell (to whom she is married in 1910)?  It’s very unlikely the latter as they only married a month before the census was taken.  And if you look closely, the census taker initially wrote a “5” in the 1900 census, then overwrote it with a “4”.  Helen’s youngest daughter, Margaret, was two at the time.  Is the reason Helen was living with her mother because she was pregnant at the time and therefore she initially answered 5 but the youngest had not yet been born so she corrected herself when then asked “how many are living”?  If so, what happened to him/her?  I’m not sure I’ll ever solve this mystery.  But that’s what makes this type of research so interesting!