I’m pretty sure my ancestors hate me. This may be going out on a limb, but I really think that the Mays family did everything they could think of to be very deceptive about who they were and what they were doing. I’m not going to feel guilty about all the attention I was giving my Dad’s side of the family now. I’ll probably annoy you with the amount of rants I’ll end up posting here while trying to figure out the Mays line of my family tree. In fact, I’m debating setting up an Elliott/Rowan County genealogy file. I’m tempted to just go through all the available records and map out the major surnames. They’re all in my tree somewhere so it may even help me later down the line. It’s just so confusing trying to find the right people when they were all named the same thing at the same time. Last night, I had a first for me though.
That’s two death certificates for the same person. Here’s where things go squirrelly. The death certificates give different birth dates. I actually had recorded the May 28th date into my database as the preferred date because that’s the date that Walker gave on his WWI Draft Card. I’m confused that there are completely different causes of death on each certificate. If that wasn’t enough, there are even different dates of death. I’m wondering why his hometown would have a death certificate done when he most likely died at the hospital in Boyd County.
So here’s yet another reason why I am beyond frustrated trying to sort out the Mays family.
Your frustration is *probably* being caused by old courthouse fires in Kentucky where the original records were destroyed and later reconstructed — as best they could. I have heard of several occasions of this where other Mays “dead ends” were eventually figured out.
Thanks for that information Dan! I hadn’t thought about records being reconstructed but it would make sense. 🙂
Reconstructed records were sometimes in error because they often went to the cemeteries and took information off the headstones. Sometimes the headstones would have the name that the guy went by — but not always his legal, given name.
Another “detour” that might be helpful to know: When searching Mays records from Kentucky, there are some references to “Washington”. Understand that a branch of the Mays family moved to Washington, Kentucky — not Washington state.
. . . and be sure to Google “Carl Mays” — a fascinating story & distant shirttail relative of mine.
I’m going to make a note about Washington in my notebook, that’s something I might forget later. I usually try to be sure about something like that. My mom was named after a state, so I’ve always been pretty good about making sure someone was talking about the state or my Mom but you can never be too sure!