OMG!!!!

[CountAllVotes]

I think I found my grandmother!

It seems she died at the age of 100 years in 2000, just 2 years before my own mother died!

This finding is quite curious. My mother was adopted out (sold?) and she ended up moving to Tucson, AZ in 1930 or so and I am beginning to think that perhaps this baby stealing and "adoption" practice was not at all uncommon in Indian country c. 1900. :(

The record I found shows the woman I found by her maiden name and she had acquired a Social Security number in the 1970s in ARIZONA! She was born in Texas (she says 1900 in this record; another record states 1905) and it shows that Texas (where she was born) was her last place of residence prior to death.

Is there a Texas birth/death index?

Could this be her? If it is her, it means she tried to find my mother for many years prior to her death. I have other records I recently acquired from my foster aunt and it is an interview with her uncle's late wife and she states that one of my foster aunt's other aunts had a baby that was stolen from her (this was c. 1900 or so) and she never got the baby back and the child died at the age of 16 years of TB.

I cannot believe this bizarre finding. I'd write for the record on her as I do know the names of both her mother and her father.

Can you guys believe this? I wonder what my mother would have done had she known her real mother was alive and apparently looking for her child for what seems to be most of her life.

On one level I am glad to find this info. but on another level it makes me incredibly sad.

Comments anyone? How far should I go with this?

Thank you for any advice on this.

CountAllVotes

[Gormy Cuss]

1. What have you done so far to link this woman to your mother?

There are Texas birth and death indices available at Ancestry.com (if you don't have a membership, run the name search and see if you get any hits, then PM the details to me and I'll retrieve what I can for you. )

Have you looked for her in census records? There may be a wealth of clues there. I was able to confirm that the long rumored father of my grandmother's illegitimate sibling was living next door at the time the sibling was born because it was in the census data. In your case, you may find the names of the woman's siblings and trace them forward to look for living nieces or nephews.

[CountAllVotes]

2. yes

:hi: and yes I am a member of ancestry.com. I will check further. This woman appears in the 1910, 1920 and 1930 census under the same name. In the last record she states she is single and has no children (which was not true being she was my grandmother I am certain).

It seems she never married nor changed her name which is quite odd given what I've run up against so far with other Indian relations. There was a full sister that seems to have become a "deaconess" and a half-brother that seems to have disappeared - the last record of him was his WWI registration card. :(

What I really need is a search for obits. in specific places in Texas, i.e. Fayetteville and Longview. I called Longview's library, and received little help.

Thanks again.

[Gormy Cuss]

3. Indian lines are difficult.

My line has an adoption ca. 1900 of an Indian child to a white family --not forced, as best we can tell. The mother who surrendered the child was Indian but in the few records where I have found her she is described as white. It's pretty common to see that in Maine for Indians who didn't live in a tribal area. To complicate matters my ancestors were Canadian Indians.


Have you tried a RAOGK request? I haven't had much luck with it but there may be someone in those areas who may do look-ups for you. Does Texas have a good state library? I've had good luck in other states finding newspaper archives in state libraries.

[CountAllVotes]

4. I found out more yesterday

I called up an old friend of mine that knows much. I told him that many of these people were in a specific part of Arkansas before they ended up in Texas. He knew who they were and it seems that they moved there before the Trail of Tears.

I told him I suppose that many still are there today perhaps. He thought so and I told him I knew they weren't extinct as he was talking to one (lol!).

Anyway, yes, Indian lines are very difficult to search for good reason but I have had some success. All ID themselves as "white" - never Indian.

Anyway, thanks again for your ideas. I'll try rereading the Texas indexes again - maybe I'll find something.

My feeling is that there were no children born to any of these people except for my mother. This would make sense if everyone had died out.