And Now It All Makes No Sense

I started the genealogy before the internet, in the days of snail mail. Each nugget of information that came in the mail led to another clue, another name, and it satisfied that “detective” in me. Now it is just googling a name and even though I am satisfied that my sources matches up with many others it doesn’t satisfied the detective in me. Sometimes a new name, a new member of the family will be added with verification but it is all too easy.

There is one name in my family’s history that has no history. She is my great grandmother on my father’s side of the family. She is just a name. All of the letters, emails, and googling turns up empty. I can find her on the census but she disappeared after the 1910 census. Her husband is there but she is not. I cannot find her death records either.

What little I know of her came from Granny. When she first married her husband they made a trip to Nevada so she can meet his family. The visit didn’t go well and her memories are not positive. Knowing as much as I do about her husband, my grandfather, who I called Papa Doctor, I can understand the visit going wrong. He was arrogant and cold and all flash. What I know is she owned a diner in Nevada, she was rude, and trashy, her kids were rude, and her new husband was just as bad.

New husband? Who was he, what is his name, did he have kids? Once again my search turned up nothing and she slipped away into a folder titled “Thornton.”

I received an offer to join a newspaper archive for free for two weeks and after making sure it was legitimate, I joined. That is when I pulled her file and started calculating, estimating her age and birth date based on her husband’s information. I thought I came up with a reasonable estimate of her date of death. I searched all of the Nevada’s newspaper under her maiden name and married name and came up with nothing. I knew her first husband died in Idaho so I tried that state and when that failed I decided to use her residences listed on all of the censuses. When I typed in “Mary Thornton” in the Utah’s newspaper search, I hit pay dirt.

And now it all makes no sense.

Mary Thornton Bishop, 63, Dies
Native of Oxford Idaho Succumbs At Home In Ogden

According to her obit she married Charles Bishop, June 30 1919. The only reference to her first husband was the following blurb, “She was married to W. A. Richardson in 1887, who died.”

In 1919, W. A. was very much alive and living in Idaho. He was worthless with a tendency to drink a bit and lived hand to mouth but he was very much alive.

She found her faith again after her marriage to Mr. Bishop, rejoined the LDS Church and was an auxiliary member of the Master Plumbers Association.” She lived a quiet, stable life in Ogden and she was never an owner of a diner in Nevada. Her first husband, W. A. couldn’t hold a job let alone own and operate a diner. I can’t find anything that says he lived in Nevada.

Who did you meet in Nevada, Granny? Why did Papa Doctor suddenly become interested in his family after he written them off and reinvented his life? I am sure she met someone that might be a family member, possibly a sibling, but she did not meet Mary. There is a slight possibility that W. A. was there but he never remarried.

As usual, a mystery solved leads to another mystery. Fortunately her obit and death records lists her parents and now I have some detective work to do.