Among the Missing

I have to say that while it's been very gratifying with some of my early successes in uncovering the hitherto-unknown history of the Grace clan in America, I still have a lot of frustration from the remaining brick walls, and I've had little luck against them. I know I'm not going to stop trying, but it's still bugging me that I can't find the information even though I should be able to at least find more of the basics. But as usual, the Grace family trips me up with common names ... but also changed names in America. It's those stupid middle names that were not recorded before in Ireland (at least nothing I can find), that suddenly get used in America, but not entirely used all the time. So it's hard enough to find these folks with already-common names, but I have double the names to look for now, because I'm just not quite sure when they used their first name and when they used their middle name. 

Michael is the prime example. The eldest son, already an adult when they came over to America at 18. But I don't know what he was up to in America at first, mostly because the other Grace family in Warren/Clarendon had a son named Michael/Mike, so while I see mention in the local papers of someone named Michael/Mike, I wasn't sure which one it was, though I strongly suspect it was the older one, because that Grace family had been established for more than a decade in town before my Grace ancestors arrived. There was one article about a "Mike Grace" working in California for Standard Oil, but it referenced a wife; it could have been him, but I just don't have enough information to be sure. I was able to find marriage information for Michael, because in the notes that my grandmother had made based on her conversations with Ida Belle Grace, she remembered that Mike's wife was named Sadie with the middle name of Isabella. And I was able to find a marriage record in Ohio from 1888 for a Sadie Stitt (and further research found that her full name was Sarah Isabelle Stitt), though interestingly enough, her groom's name was "Burtman M. Grace" But then I found that Sadie was part of a larger family, the Workmans, and that the Workman family had actually published a genealogy, so I was able to find Burtman (now listed as "Bertram") again, only this time it shows that it was Michael, with the correct birth year, and listing Richard Grace and Ellen "Dreeland" as his parents. It also listed three children from them, and also had a death year and place for Michael ... 1904, in Pittsburgh, PA. 

I was able to fill in a few more blanks, but also there were tantalizing gaps; a child named Ralph Grace was listed as the firstborn in the Workman family history, only living 2 years, but while a birth and death date were listed in the published history, I could find no documents from the counties or towns where the birth and death were supposed to have happened. Next oldest child Isabelle Grace also had a birthdate in the Workman family history, but I could find no birth record for her in the county she was supposed to have been born. I was able to find a lot of other information about her, marriage, children, death, etc., but couldn't entirely confirm what the Workman family book had said. Youngest child was Richard William Grace (which I found interesting, because JW Grace's oldest son was also named "Richard William Grace"), but at least I could find a birth record for him (though it was filed in 1941 by his mother), showing that he was born in the West Virginia oil fields, and also recorded his father as "Bertram Michael Grace," indicating he was a laborer in the oil field, and says he was from North Clarendon (as a birth place, rather than Ireland), though in the Workman history, it does say he was born in Ireland. And then in Richard Grace's 1903 last will and testament, it mentions Michael (no "Bertram") and says he was in Woodsfield, OH, which was an oil boom town in eastern Ohio. But that's pretty much it for Michael. Sadie marries again in 1908, and the marriage certificate noted she was a widow, and I was able to research where she was the rest of her life until she died, as well as tracking both Isabell and Richard to the end of their lives, and of Isabell's children to the end of theirs (Richard married twice, but both marriages ended in divorce on the grounds of cruelty, and though he was a successful businessman, he ended up dying alone). I don't distrust the Workman family history, because in the entries about Sadie and her kids, the it was actually mentioned in that section that Sadie provided the information herself, and that Isabell provided more information after Sadie died. So I believe that Michael died in 1904. I just can't find ANY record of his passing. 

I've reached out to archives in Pittsburgh; no burial records exist for him there, no death records, nothing in the local papers. It's possible he could have died there and the body shipped back to eastern Ohio, where Sadie's family was from, and buried in a local cemetery there. I can't find any records of that cemetery, though. So I have to try to reach out to a local government there, or local historical society and see if such records exist. I'm not challenging the claim that he died, I just want PROOF. I want to be able to close the case, though I'd love to know how often he was Bertram, and how often he was Mike. Not that either name is easy to find; Michael Grace is too common, and while Bertram Grace most assuredly isn't, aside from someone really named Bertram Grace in Kansas, there's not a lot of other ones in the US, so my searches keep coming up empty-handed. I do wonder if he might have been in a hospital in Pittsburgh ... or perhaps in a jail? That thought crossed my mind. I did see a listing for a court case in West Virginia in the late 1890s for a case against a "Michael Grace" in the area he was known to be working in, so I wonder if he had gotten into trouble, and went by Bertram to avoid any identification as Michael Grace? That was an era when people didn't carry ID, and someone could change their name and background as many times as they wanted. So I have to try to do some digging. I know it would be easy to just take the Workman history on faith, but I just want some documentary evidence beyond that, because I know that even published histories could be wrong, and Isabel was a young adolescent when Michael died and might not have had all the details, and he might have died under unusual circumstances that even Sadie might not have known about. I don't know, I guess I'm grasping at straws, but I just want some more details to flesh out this life. 

The same is true for the eldest daughter, Bridget, who also appears to have changed her name. Though her name also appears to confuse some other folks who have her in their online trees, as they all call her "Bird" as a nickname. I'm not sure where that came from, aside from the passenger list in 1881 when they came over from Ireland. It looks to me like her name was written "Brid" as short for Bridget, but I guess some folks see it as Bird.I don't think she had a nickname, because at least no one in my family would've known much about her. My grandmother, who had talked about the family history at length with her mother-in-law, Ida Belle Grace, left notes about the conversations, and apparently Ida Belle never mentioned Bridget, because the only notes mention JW, Mike, Tom, Margaret (remembered as an "old maid" by Ida Belle), and Jim (and Ida Belle remembered he was in Burma). But no Bridget. The other Grace family in Clarendon also had a daughter named Bridget (as it seems every Irish family had a daughter named Bridget!), but she married before she came over from Ireland, so she wasn't Bridget Grace anymore, which allowed me to find a few stories about my great-great-aunt Bridget, who apparently worked in the kitchen in the finest hotel in Warren, PA. And also who apparently fell down some steps there and broke her ankle. And then I was able to find a marriage record for her. In July 1896, she married a man named John McDonald, from Fostoria, Ohio. He was 50, and she was 28. I find it interesting that none of the witnesses were her family, but I suppose in 1896, the only ones left at home would have been her father Richard, stepmother Ellen (I should call her "evil stepmother," based on Margaret's medical record interviews), Margaret and James. But still, at least her sister or brother could have been a witness. It's all conjecture, I know, but I wonder if perhaps she married against her father's wishes? There was the age difference, but by Irish standards she was an old spinster at 28, so Richard would have likely been pleased she married and moved out of the house. If the story about her working in the hotel was correct, it also makes me wonder if he was a guest at the hotel and met her there. 

Knowing that they were listed on Richard's will as living in Cygnet, OH, which is a small town in the western part of the state, south of Bowling Green, I actually found them in the 1900 US Census, living in Cygnet. Though in the Census, he listed his age as 48 (instead of 54, if we went by the age on the wedding record from four years earlier), though hers was correct at 32. But on the census, she was no longer Bridget, but was now "Elizabeth B. McDonald." I'm not sure where Elizabeth came from, or why. Again, perhaps it was a middle name, not previously recorded on her birth records from Ireland, but something she may have used to separate herself from any other Bridgets back in Ireland or even the Bridget Grace Malone in Clarendon. I don't know. On the Census, she did list her birthplace as Ireland (his was Michigan), and her parents were listed as born in Ireland (while his were born in Scotland). She had no occupation listed, but his was "Oil well pumper." Another oil man! It was not surprising they were in Cygnet, as that was ground zero for a massive oil boom in Western Ohio that lasted a few years. Turns out under the flat farmlands there was a large reservoir of oil, though it shouldn't have been surprising, because that whole area had been a giant swamp for probably thousands of years or longer, until settlers drained the "Great Black Swamp" (as the area had been called) to create farmland. So the conditions. But there was a huge boom going on there, and Cygnet was a wild open oil boom town. Most of the people on their Census page were oil workers, and not surprisingly, most of them were also from Pennsylvania (once oil was discovered elsewhere, Pennsylvanians flocked to the new fields, and there was a sort of mystique that the best oil field workers were from Pennsylvania). So I was able to move her story forward, just a bit. But the name change made it infinitely more difficult now, because her name became a lot more common, though I guess "Bridget McDonald" was also sort of common. And of course, her husband's name was quite common! 

And it's in Cygnet that things got a little hazy from that point on. Because I think I found a newspaper article about John McDonald, as there was an article from a nearby newspaper in 1902 about how Cygnet's town marshall was a man named Jack McDonald, and "formerly a strapping oil driller," but by then suffering from rheumatism, and so popular that the locals avoided causing crime because they liked him so much and knew he couldn't physically stop them. I also found some court cases involving John and Elizabeth McDonald about some property that they bought and were cheated out of. And then looking through Wood County, Ohio vital records, I found that a man named John McDonald died on November 30, 1907 in Cygnet, of Peritonitis, and then not much long after that, a notice in a local paper that some property owned by Elizabeth McDonald was sold. And that was it. I'm fairly sure that the death was likely the right John McDonald, but then again, it's such a common name that it's difficult to be sure! But from that point on, I lose them both from the storyline. The thing is, if John didn't die in 1907, then he and Elizabeth/Bridget could have moved on in search of more oil, which was EXTREMELY common back then, and headed west. There are so many people named John and Elizabeth McDonald out there that it's difficult finding them, if they did move on. And if he did die in 1907, then I have no idea what happened to Elizabeth afterwards. I would say she likely moved away, as there might not have been much reason for her to stay in Cygnet after his death. But I have no idea where she could have moved to. And there's always the possibility that as she was still a fairly young widow, she could have remarried, which would have covered her tracks even more thoroughly. I don't know if she remained Elizabeth, or went back to using Bridget. I've looked around Ohio, in Census records and newspapers, and also looked at Detroit, as it wasn't that far from Cygnet. And nothing comes up, nor do any records appear to be the right one. I've looked through death records, in case an obituary or a death certificate would have her father's name on it or a sibling's name, and nothing comes up. 

Unfortunately, there's not much help from her brother James, via his hospital interviews. In his interview from 1933, when he was purportedly sober, her name doesn't even come up! Nor does his sister Margaret's name, even though he was likely living with her at the time! In 1950, when he was admitted for alcoholic psychosis, he does remember her ... when he recounts his siblings, he mentions her as having died at age 65, cause unknown. Of course, in the same interview, he mentions his mother as living into her 70's and dying in the Detroit area in 1928 or 1929 ... but then in the same interview mentioned that his mother died soon after childbirth. I wondered if possibly he confused his mother with Bridget, and Bridget was the one who died in Detroit? But if she did, I sure haven't found anything to back that up. So these are my main Grace family mysteries now (along with their brother Patrick). Oh, there's the tale of Richard Grace Jr., one of the older sons, the one who didn't come with the family to America, and who died a few years after they left ... and according to James (in both interviews) that it was because of an infection he received after having a knitting needle shoved up his nose! I did look in some New Ross newspapers, but found no corroborating story, but I'd like to find more information on that ... at least to see if it's true! I think these are three folks on my tree who I will continually return to over time, and try again to find out more about them. There might be a new source that's become available, or I might come up with a new line of query to research ... I'm not going to give up, just because I want these stories to have a conclusion, instead of the names just disappearing. I'm not sure anyone else cares, because Mike doesn't appear to have any surviving descendants, so the only descendants of the family are Thomas's and JW's, and from what I can tell, no one else has delved this deeply into the family, so I guess it's my private little obsession. But I don't focus entirely on them, because there's still other parts of the family that need some deep dives, or some additional background research to help provide context into their lives and times.