I recently inherited my grandfather’s collection of genealogy documents when he moved to a retirement home and didn’t take them with him. I am in the process of hauling suitcases full of binders and envelopes of letters, pictures, and loose documents from Utah to Virginia and sorting everything out. One item I found in the collection turned out to be the beginning of a mystery even though it initially seemed very straight forward.
I found a funeral announcement for Wilbur Sydney Squire (L449-4YR), who died in 1916. I didn’t immediately recognize the name, but I have lots of Squires in my family tree, so I expected to just scan the card and attach it to an existing person in my research. I was surprised when I searched my tree and didn’t find a match.
I next turned to FamilySearch.org to see if I could find him there. I did, and he was listed as the son of John Russel Squire (L449-LXT). However, I have John Squire in my research and three of his sons, but Wilbur wasn’t among them. There was no documentation on FamilySearch.org to support the relationship either.
I turned to Ancestry.com and searched for Wilbur Sydney Squire with the birth and death dates and locations on the notice to see what I could find, trying to find documentation of where Wilbur fit into my family. Among the search results was a familiar hit in the 1880 Census. In the household of Edmond Frederick Squire (KF5Z-Q8X), my third-great grandfather, I found Sydney Squire, nephew, age 4. I had previously reviewed this census record when researching my direct line and had marked Sydney Squire as someone to come back and research because I didn’t know where he fit. This was a small step in the right direction, but it still left three of Edmond’s brothers as the possible father for Wilbur Sydney.
As I continued to search through records, I still couldn’t find much. I found a marriage record for Wilbur S Squire (of the right age and general location) to Lydia T. Bruce (L449-H12), but sadly the marriage license document of the time didn’t ask for parents. The next thing I found was the 1910 Census with Wilbur and Lydia and one child living in Chandler, Oklahoma—a long way from Pennsylvania where they both originated and most of my family lines stayed—but the funeral notice noted that Wilbur died in Newkirk, Oklahoma, so I’m pretty confident that the marriage record and the census record are my Wilbur Squire. But that’s it, I can’t find anything else.
My next hope was to look for an obituary, maybe it would include a mention of his parents or something. I started searching online newspaper archives and didn’t find an obituary, but I did find three different newspapers in Oklahoma and the vicinity for a W. S. Squire in 1916.
“W. S. Squire of Newkirk, and Arch Kronk of Chilocco, OK are dead and David Hunt of Newkirk, is unconscious from gas asphyxiation encountered when they tried to change a disc on the orifice natural gas meter at the People’s Fuel & Supply Company’s station.”
This is my Wilbur Squire, the dates and locations are right, and the marriage and 1910 Census records both show that Wilbur worked in the oil and gas industry. Still no parents though. At this point I’m starting to get desperate because I’ve exhausted all my usual sources of information.
I wondered if I could use DNA matches to find a close enough link between Wilbur’s descendants and the descendants of John Squire’s other children—as compared to my grandfather’s DNA, who is Wilbur’s first cousin twice removed—to at least support the hypothesis that John Squire is the father. There is a 7-year gap between Wilbur’s birth and the birth of the eldest of three other sons (who are all born 2 years apart), so I’m pretty sure Wilbur must be from a first marriage that I can’t find documentation for. I was fresh back from RootsTech and feeling ready to apply the DNA research skills I learned, so I started doing the descendancy research and mapping out the hypothesized relationships. Unfortunately, while I found two children for Wilbur Squire, I couldn’t find any children for either of them. They are just on the cusp of when I might have found them with children on the 1940 Census, but no dice.
Uncertain if it was even worth doing the descendancy research on John Squire’s other children or not, I decided to play around with Ancestry’s new ThruLines to see if any of my grandfather’s 1,400+ close matches (4th cousin or closer) are even from the right parts of the family. (ThruLines looks for common ancestors among DNA matches’ attached trees and sorts out your matches so you can hopefully find matches on the lines you are looking for.) I looked for any DNA matches that come through Frederick Squire (KGVJ-W7B), the father of Edmond and John. Unfortunately, all my grandfather’s DNA matches through that ancestor are my own uncles, aunts and cousins, and two matches through one of Edmond’s and John’s half-sister. No matches that I could connect to any of Edmond’s brothers to test my hypothesis. Another dead end.
All this research took about 2 weeks. In the meantime, I mentioned the trouble I was having to my mother, and she mentioned it to her father and asked if he knew Wilbur’s parentage. He said he didn’t remember, though he could remember off the top of his head that he died in an industrial accident. (Pretty impressive!) He asked my mom to bring him his book of genealogy research with Wilbur Squire in it so that he could double check what info he did have. When my mom texted me to ask if I had the book or if she should go look for it at his house, I started digging through the latest suitcase of folders that I still hadn’t unpacked. Eventually I found a Squire folder with a family group record that showed Wilbur Squire as the son of John Squire and Mrs. John Squire, his first wife.
As I kept flipping through the folder, I finally hit pay dirt! At the back were a series of transcribed letters from John to his brother Edmond spanning 1877 to 1880. As I skimmed through them, I learned that John had left Pennsylvania to work in the western U.S. territories, sometimes in oil fields, sometimes on the railroad. But more importantly, he sent Wilbur “love from his pa” in each letter. Finally! the proof that John is Wilbur’s father and I can slot him into his place in the family tree.
I still don’t know who John’s first wife was. I can only presume that she died and John decided he needed to travel to find better work, leaving his young son with his brother. I’ve sketched out a research plan to eventually search the Pennsylvania State Library newspaper microfilms and a few other non-digital sources in the hopes of eventually getting more information. But for now, I can lay one mystery to rest.
Genealogy Adventures 