Bam!

I have made it my mission lately to try to "close the door" on the open-ended ancestors' lives.  There are no fewer than 820 living relatives currently in the family tree.  Of course, a number of these are people like you and I.  And then there are those who probably died over 100 years ago.  And I'd like to close that door by finding the death information for these people thereby lowering that number of living relatives to something closer to a reasonable number such as those you might invite to a wedding. When I find a death date and enter it into the family tree, I exclaim "BAM!" out loud.  Even when alone.  Retirement allows me many more opportunities for "BAM!" than ever before.  (I'm not sure that came out the way I intended)

I randomly select one of those living relatives that should be long-dead and start looking.  Pretty soon I'm wandering down a tangled road of maybe and perhaps and uncovering potential stories.  Sometimes I get lost and forget to blog. 

I thought you might be semi-interested in one such story.  Grampie Brown (Nanny Flynn's grandfather) had 5 brothers and sisters.  He had one older sister Drusilla and one younger brother Walter along with three younger sisters Jane, Elizabeth and Ida.  This family lived primarily in Buffalo until the children became adults.
Drusilla, Jane, Elizabeth, Ida and Grampie are all accounted for with full stories from birth to death. 

But Walter does not and he has bothered me for a long time.  I want to find his story, but Walter Brown is a fairly common name especially in a city like Buffalo NY.  Two of the sisters married and lived in Michigan.  Michigan is much more open than New York in sharing vital records like marriage, death and cemetery records so I was able to track them even though females are harder because you may not know their married names.  I was lucky to obtain their father's will which listed each of the children and their residence at the time. 

Furthermore, I was lucky that the youngest daughter Ida married a man with an unusual name Ivah Bradt.  They lived in Ellicottville and their mother lived with them after her husband died. Take note of this tidbit from the Ellicottville NY Post April 1889:

Take note of station agent I.N. Bradt losing his goose.  These people had a hard time keeping track of their geese (maybe you remember another lost goose during the Civil War period.....and maybe you don't).

Anyhow, my laser-focused attention on Walter's life has not produced anything definitive yet.  He might have married a Sarah Armstrong and lived in Buffalo himself.  Or it was another Walter Brown.  Sigh.  I'm going to put Walter aside and try for another "BAM!"  See you on the other side.