In my last Mystery Monday post, I introduced the question of
who the parents of one set of my paternal 2x great-grandparents were. The
question was asked of me by one of my 3rd cousins in Alabama – we share
(James) Steven Evans and Laura Ann Scruggs as our great-great-grandparents, but
neither of us had yet researched beyond that generation. So, the hunt was on.
I spent the next 3 blog posts (1, 2, 3) detailing the results of
that hunt, focusing on (James) Steven Evans’ parents, who I now believe to be
Daniel Evans and Jennette (aka Anna Jane) Welch. And I threw in a bonus post with
some lingering questions about (James) Steven Evans’ siblings. But of course,
that was all focused on only one side of the couple my cousin and I wanted to
know more about.
Who were the parents of Laura Ann Scruggs?
Spoiler Alert: I’m still not certain. But, that doesn’t mean
I haven’t learned some things along the way, and I definitely have more ideas
for research. So, I figured, why not share where things stand at the moment,
and post more when I have more to say?
Here’s what I knew about my 2x great-grandmother Laura Ann
Scruggs starting out:
- She was born about 1885 in Alabama, possibly in
Montgomery County.
- She gave birth to perhaps 14 children (per
family oral history), of which I can document somewhere between 8 and 10, depending
on whether there are a couple of duplicates that don’t quite appear as such in
the records I have access to at the moment. They are: Thomas, Jannie Mae, Jenette,
Sarah, Anna Jane, Jessie, Jestine, my great-grandfather Steve (aka Theodore), William
Marshall, and James Henry. The first was born about 1900 or 1901 and the last
about 1915. The 1910 U.S. Census reported that she was the mother of 5 children,
all of whom were living.
- She and her family lived in Dooley, Montgomery
County, Alabama in 1910.
- She last appears in a record in September 1918,
when she is listed as her husband’s nearest relative when he registers for the
draft for World War I. They are living in Montgomery, AL.
- She may have died after being kicked in the
stomach by a pig that had escaped its enclosure, per family lore. According to
the story, she was pregnant at the time and neither she nor the baby survived.
- Her husband marries another woman in 1920.
- She has descendants in Alabama, Illinois,
Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, at the least, including
several with memories of her children.
This both feels like a lot and a
little. It’s definitely a useful starting point for finding out who her parents
were, and for further researching her life overall. I’ve got a rough when and a
where, which is helpful as Laura seems to have been born a few years into the
period when Alabama counties were required to register births. Compliance was
less than perfect, and – unhelpfully – the records generally do not list the
name of the child, but rather the names of the parents; you can see how that
would be problematic! But, if you’ve read the Mystery Monday post that kicked
this whole series off, you know that I have a guess for the name of her mother:
Eliza Scruggs. Of course, I don’t know if that’s her maiden name or a married
name, but it’s something.
In any case, I haven’t found a promising record
online, but I’m in contact with the local county archives, so we’ll see what
happens. (The records wouldn’t have gone through the Department of Public Health
yet, but rather through the county court, and per my outreach, it sounds like
these early records are held by the archives.)
A death certificate would also be of help here, as it should name her parents. However, while I have a sense of when she might have died – between 1918 and 1920 – I don’t
know that for sure and haven’t found a death record yet. If a death certificate
exists, I would guess that either her husband or one of her children would have
served as the informant. They seem to have known her maiden name – sort of –
based on later documents. My hope is that they knew the full names of her
parents. I haven’t had any luck with online searches, but, again, I feel like
there is more work to be done.
In fact, there’s also the
possibility that she didn’t die between 1918 and 1920, but that she and (James)
Steven got divorced. That would go against the oral history, but I'm not going to rule this out completely. Perhaps a death certificate exists for her under a different
surname at a later date in time. I definitely haven’t turned over every stone
yet – either online or in the archives – so I’ll keep looking.
That might sound like two very
solid “I haven’t finished researching yet”s – and that’s true – but, like I
said at the beginning of this post, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing more to
say! I mentioned, for example, that Laura Ann’s kids did seem to know her
maiden name, “sort of.” What do I mean by that? Well, it’s time for another “The
Many Names Of…” blog post, where we explore all the different ways an ancestor
was referred to in the records. That’ll be my next post.
And I mentioned that I do have a
guess as to the name of her mother – Eliza Scruggs – though I don’t know
whether that is her maiden name or a married name. The search for Eliza Scruggs
will be the topic of at least one post – and, quite possibly, more. Every lead
just leads me to another mystery!
So, that’s where I’ll leave this
story for now. But stay tuned for a few more posts.
* * *
Do you know anything about
Laura Ann Scruggs or her family? Got a hot tip for me to dig into? Drop a note
in the comments below!
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