Research

Another problem that I have with family history is researching. First of all there is the never ending searches that you do. There always seems to be more to look for and more to find, but this can be fun. It is like being a detective for dead people. There are some very interesting things out there, like my ancestor Thomas Alfred Hindmarsh (although they got his name wrong listed as J. T. Hindmarsh, but as he is the only father of a Fred Hindmarsh and he had a son named Jessie Thomas Hindmarsh who was too young for this incident, and also it took place at "his" shop where they made baskets and things and because he is listed as a basketmaker in the English census earlier (Can you tell from this horribly done explanation one of the reasons that research can be maddening at times?)) who was arrested along with his son for stealing alcohol from the drug store next door to the basketry shop. He was listed as very drunk to the point that he couldn't walk. Then, when he was older, he was suing a neighbor for hanging his clothes on his property (apparently the close line went across both properties). They were both old men and got angry and started using ethnic slurs. The case was thrown out of court quickly. You can't take everything you see as fact. Sometimes you can't find facts, no matter how hard you look. A nice example of this is that I found a written history about one of my ancestors, Alonzo Pearce, who supposedly died in his 80's after falling out of a cherry tree. He died in February. I'm not sure why and 84 year old would be climbing trees in the winter in Provo, Utah. The newspapers do mention his death (there were two at the time). One just mentioned his death and when his funeral would be. The other listed his cause of death as the effects of frozen feet. I'm not sure how a person can die of frozen feet. Maybe he was stuck outside for a long time after he fell out of a tree. The sexton record lists him as dying from old age. There may be one more record to check at the county level that they started keeping the year that he died. I'm not sure of the exact date of when they started keeping records so I may not find anything else. In that case, I will never really know what he died from. (And by the way, Pearce can be spelled many different ways, which is a pain. Interestingly, one of the more common ways for this particular family is Purse or Purce. My guess that is because of an accent of sorts.)