Steps to Researching My Family History - Step 3 - Branching Out (part 3)

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In my last "Steps to Researching My Family History" (SRMFH) post, I finally finished working through the hints for both parents of Robert Marvin Dunn (my paternal grandfather). Now it's time to move on to the parents of Jeraline Boiles (his wife), so we can finish out that side of the branch. I plan to move through these hints a bit quicker than the previous couple of posts because we have covered most of the various types of hint information. I will, however, stop to point out any new pertinent information or as yet undiscussed hint type.

So let's get down to the nitty-gritty, shall we? The parents of my paternal grandmother, Jeraline Boiles were Burleson Boiles and Laura A Cross.

I'll start by looking through the top priority hints that have appeared for Burleson Boiles:

• there were no birth certificates, but there was a birth index for an unnamed infant born 5 September 1911. Since we know Lila was born about 1912 and no other sibling is within three years, I am going to make an assumption that this is her birthdate. If we do not get any new hints verifying this information, we can always back it out later.

• there were two marriage indexes, one for Burl Boiles and one for Burt Boiles. Both of these records indicated he married Laura Cross on 14 September 1902 in Hill County, Texas, so I am assuming the later was a misspelling.

• there was also two draft cards, one from WWI for Burleson with the correct birthdate and one from WWII for Burl with the same birthdate indicating he had no middle name.

Before we move on, it's time for another pop quiz:

• What are the three types of records in which we place medium confidence (not the highest, but not the lowest priority)?

If you said death records, obituaries, and cemetery headstones, you would be right on the money.

So, let's look through Grandpa Boiles hints and see what we find:

• there was a copy of his death certificate:

From his death certificate, we get his birth date, birth place (state), death date, his father's initials, and the maiden name of his mother. If you look closely (at the informant), you will see that we also got the full name of his son (which we didn't have before).

• there was also a Social Security Applications and Claims Index which contained the city and county of his birth, his father first name, and a different spelling for his mother's maiden name. Since this information is from an official governmental organization and not just from someone's memory, I will update her maiden name to "Holley" to match this record.

• There was also a Death Index which verified his death date and indicated that he was widowed. So now we know that Laura A Cross died before 9 January 1972.

In addition to these records, there were three census records, one Find-a-Grave entry, and an Ancestry Member Trees entry. Once again, I will skip over these until I have some more corroborating information

In looking through Laura's hints, there were no birth records, marriage/divorce records, or draft cards.

• there is, however, a copy of the death certificate of De Lila Thompson which listed Burl Boiles and Laura Ada Cross as her parents:

This document confirms the birthdate we obtained from the Birth Index that was included in the hints for Burleson (above), It also provides Laura's middle name and De Lila's date of death.

• there are also two Death Index records for Laura. One with a death date of 31 July 1969 and another with a death date of 15 July 1969. Since we have two different dates, I will hold off on accepting either hint for the moment. Something of note, though, the one dated 31 July 1969 listed Laura as being single. We know that she was survived by her husband, so this one looks suspicious.

• additionally, there is a there was also a Social Security Applications and Claims Index which includes the 15 Jul 1969 death date, as well as here birthdate (which matches the Death Index with the matching death date) and the names of Laura's parents. Normally I would say we have corroborating data. However, both of the matching records came from the same source (Social Security Administration), so I will manually add in Laura's parents names and leave the dates empty for now.

• there is also a City Directory hint for Laura, but it is from New Jersey and upon further inspection, the name in the record in Laura Bolles and not Boiles, so I ignored that hint all together.

At this point, other than the death indexes and Social Security Applications and Claims Index, there are only census records, a Find-a-Grave entry and Ancestry Member Trees left as hints for Laura. Once again, I will hold off adding these hints until I can get some other documents to verify this information.

So that wraps up the hint verification process for Burleson Boiles and Laura Ada Cross. We now have information on both parents for Jeraline Boiles including each of their parent's names. That completes a full three generations back for my father's side of the family.

In summary, I have now finished the hints for both of Robert Marvin Dunn's parents and both of Jeraline Boiles parents. Before moving on to the parents of my maternal grandparents, I will take a deeper dive into the data we have discovered so far and start looking to incorporate this data into my Family Stories "site". I want to start adding the information we have just discovered into the site while it is still fresh on our minds. I look forward to climbing higher in the ever expanding branches of my family tree with you as we continue. If you have any questions about anything I discussed in this post, please leave me a comment. If you have any suggestions on starting a new tree, feel free to share that information in a comment, as well.

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Other related posts:
The Family History of Garrey C. Dunn, Jr. - This is my personal family history "site" on the blockchain. It is an example of the types of information you can incorporate into your own family history "site"
The Family History of Garrey C. Dunn, Jr. - How to Use This Site - You might not be familiar with some of the terminology I use or the navigation I have decided to incorporate in my family history "site" in order to help keep it organized. This page will help explain these parts of my "site".

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Other posts in the Steps to Researching My Family History series:

Steps to Researching My Family History - Introduction
Steps to Researching My Family History - Step 1 - Building the Base
Steps to Researching My Family History - Step 2 - Expanding the Foundation
Steps to Researching My Family History - Step 3 - Branching Out (part 1)
Steps to Researching My Family History - Step 3 - Branching Out (part 2)