My challenge this for this weeks’ #52Ancestors is Ellsworth Lewis, my great, great grandmother’s brother. The Lewis family is for me, one of those family lines that comes to you rife with stories and suppositions but very little fact. I have, in an earlier blog, written about Moses K. Wells who married Florence Lewis. Florence was one of six children and her younger siblings all have great names that should make it so easy to find them in records.
I had a birth date for Ellsworth but nothing else. According to the Census, he spent his entire life in Pemberton, Burlington County, New Jersey. Sadly, I discovered that his story abruptly ends in 1890. On 15 May 1890, he married Keziah Platt in the First Methodist Church at Mount Holly. And by 14 August 1890, he is dead. Someday on a trip to the New Jersey State Archives, I will look up his death certificate and find out what happened and where he is buried. That is for another day.
Interestingly enough, the part that really caught my attention was the difficulty most of my search engines and databases had with variant spellings of Ellsworth (Ellesworth, Elsworth). It is important to remember that not all databases work the way Ancestry does. If at first you don’t get any hits, try again. Many locally produced systems operate on a “what you type is what you get” system which can be frustrating for those used to Ancestry’s algorithms.
The prompt for this week’s #52ancestors was invite to dinner. Hmmm, I think I would invite Ellsworth and his new bride Keziah and gently grill them on all the local gossip!
Happy Birthday, Ellsworth!
Telling My Story 