Genealogy Story - Finding Bonnie Bishop

I received a message from my cousin, Rob Pierpont, asking for some genealogical help.  His message to me was:

I could use some help with an issue that came up yesterday. I received a phone call from the CT Civil Air Patrol. They were trying to find any relatives of Welles Leete Bishop, who was my grandfather's half brother. Welles was a pilot who was flying off the coast of Maine looking for German submarines, when his plane went down and he died. After all these years, Congress has decided to award medals to those who served in the CAP, and since I'm the first relative they were able to find, I was asked if I would accept the medal. I agreed, but after talking to Sharon, and reading my mom's story about her life, I discovered that Welles had a daughter, who was born 6 months after he died. Sharon recalls mom having occasional contact with her.

I looked on Ancestry.com and can find no reference to Welles being married, let alone having a daughter. I did find one person who might have info, but their tree is private, so I sent a message asking if they have any more info. If you have the time and the interest, here's what I know about Welles;

He was born in 1910 to Dexter and May Bishop
He was married to Thelma, but was divorced
In the 1940 census, he was single and living with my grandparents
He had a successful buisiness building bird feeders. - Bishop Bird Feeders
Between 1940 and 43, he learned to fly and joined the CAP
On Feb 2, 1943 he died when his plane went down off the coast of Maine near Bar Harbor
His daughter's name is Bonnie, she was born approx. 6 months after he died.

If you can find out anything about Bonnie I would appreciate it. I would like to give this medal to his direct descendants if possible.

Initial Searching

I first started with some standard searches in (a) ancestry.com, (b) newspapers.com [not finding anything there], and (c) google searches – looking to see what I could find about Welles Leete Bishop.  Here is what I found:

• ·         He was listed in the 1910, 1920, and 1930 census
• ·         The listing in the 1940 census was as Rob had indicated, but his name was misspelled as “Willis” instead of Welles (improper electronic scan of that page)
• ·         He also appeared in a number of years of the Meriden city directory, both before and after the 1943 date of his death (see more on this below on finding his wife)
• ·         His grave was shown with dates of 1909-1943
• ·         A patent in his name (from 1940) for a bird feeder was listed in several places
• ·         There was a single newspaper article about his death (not in newspaper.com, but using a google search)
• ·         There were several references to his company, but it appeared that the company was defunct by 1990.
• 
  

Finding his wife

The Meriden city directories from after 1943 were quite informative.  There were two types of entries.  One type was for the people with that last name, the other was for his company that was continuing to build bird houses.  These were listed under “Welles L Co (Mrs. Welles Bishop)” with an address of 1245 E Main St.  While this let me know that he was indeed married, it didn’t help with identifying her name.  But they also showed that his father was working for the company and that his older brother, Wilfred, was the sales manager.  I decided to look at all the city directories in that period by searching for “Bishop” living in Meriden. 

In the 1943 directory under Bishop there was an entry for Welles as being in the Army, but there was also an entry for “Julia H wid Wells” (misspelled) – evidently acknowledging that Welles was alive at the beginning of the year, but that by the time the directory was put together that his wife Julia was widowed.  In the 1944 directory, Julia is shown as working for the company (even though the address was incorrectly shown as 245 E Main St instead of 1245 E Main St).  But this was confirmation that the Mrs. Welles Bishop shown with the company was the same as the Julia H Bishop.

So now I had a name for the elusive wife – whom he married after 1940, but before his death in February 1943.  Then in the 1950 directory there was an entry under “Bishop” that said “Julia H married Walter Falk”.  You never know what you’re going to find in those old city directories, but she evidently remarried seven years after Welles died.  So now I needed to see if I could track her past 1950 and see if there were any references to her daughter (who would have been only six or seven when Julia remarried).

Some apparent inconsistencies – and resolving one of them

In looking for information on Julia in later years, I found other information, but also some intriguing inconsistencies.  But in all this I could still not find anything on her daughter, Bonnie.

First, Julia Falk was listed as still living in Meriden, but her middle initial was now “N” instead of “H”.  Second, I found a record of her death in 1992, but while the SS Death Record showed her as having died in Meriden, there was also a Maine Death entry showing her as having died in Skowhegan Maine.

I then did a google search looking for an obituary with Julia Falk, hoping to find mention of her daughter Bonnie with a married name and where she was living.  I was unsuccessful, but I did find two other obituaries where Julia was mentioned.  Both of these were for younger brothers of Julia, one having died in 1995 and one having died in 2005.  In both Julia Falk was listed as having pre-deceased them, but they only said that these brothers had “nieces and nephews” without any names listed.  Her brothers both had the last name of Nettleton.  But that gave me Julia’s maiden name.  I did some further searches on Julia Nettleton and was able to find that:

• ·         She was born as Julia H Nettleton (in Meriden)
• ·         Evidently when she married Welles, she kept her initial middle initial of “H”
• ·         When she re-married Walter Falk, she began using “Nettleton” as her middle name

That gave me all that I needed to know about Welles wife, Julia.  But it still didn’t give me any information about Bonnie.  I could not find Bonnie Bishop or Bonnie Falk in any Meriden or CT records.  And I still had that extraneous piece of information about Skowhegan, ME.

Making a phone call – and getting another hint

The obituary for Julia’s brother who passed away in 2005 listed a son, Frank, and his wife who lived in Meriden.  I went to whitepages.com to get a current phone number for Frank and see if he knew anything about his aunt Julia and his cousin Bonnie – since they lived in the same city and would have grown up at the same time.

The first phone number I found turned out to be disconnected, but I was able to get a phone number for his wife, Carolann.  I called her and identified myself.  She initially said that Frank was not home but that she’d pass along my information to him.  But when I asked if she knew anything about Bonnie, she said, “Oh yes, Ruth – but she goes by the name Bonnie”.  Then she said that she’d call Frank to the phone.  He said that he had not been in touch with Bonnie for 50 years since she married and moved to Maine and that he didn’t remember her married name.  He thought that she lived somewhere near Waterville.  But he said that his sister might remember and that he’d talk to her sometime in the next few days and Rob could call him and get that information.

Putting the pieces together

While I still didn’t have what I wanted, I had a few unresolved pieces of information that I thought I could use to my advantage:

• ·       Julia had died in Skowhegan, ME
• ·       Bonnie’s real name might be Ruth
• ·       Bonnie/Ruth had at one time lived near Waterville, ME

Using mapquest.com, I was able to verify that Skowhegan ME was not very far from Waterville ME.  So maybe Julia had died while visiting her daughter there in 1992?  And maybe she still lived there?  I decided to look in the ancestry.com to see if I could find her still there.  So I searched for a person with the first name of Ruth, born in 1943, living in Skowhegan.  Eureka!  The first entry on the list was a city directory of Ruth W Bishop, born in August 1943, living in Skowhegan.  So:

• ·         Her first name was indeed Ruth, not Bonnie
• ·         I wonder if her middle name is Welles, after her father?
• ·         She was born six months after the death of Welles, just like Rob had said
• ·         She apparently kept the last name of Bishop when she married

I then looked her up in whitepages.com and was able to get a current address and phone number which I passed to Rob.

A few days later, Rob called her – and verified that we had the right person. 

Some learnings

·         Sometimes what you are given is correct, sometimes it is not (like the name Bonnie)

·         Never underestimate what you might find in places like a city directory (who Julia married)

·         Don’t use just ancestry.com, use other sources as well

·         Extraneous facts are sometimes the key to the puzzle (like the offhanded comment about “Ruth”)