Well, that definitely describes me. Not only for today, but also for a long time when it comes to the Johnson line of my family tree. I actually need to be more specific, because I have a Johnson line on both my Mom and Dad’s side. Right now I’m talking about my Dad’s side.
Last time that I wrote here, I was wondering why Mary was so contrary. In that post I decided that I would need to search out more records for Mary’s children. I just didn’t have nearly enough evidence to decide if the family that lived on Long Island was the right family. The first step in that journey was to order the birth records of the other two known children in the family.
It’s not fair of me to call Mary contrary. I don’t even know Mary. However, her blood is running through my veins. Maybe that gives me a little wiggle room to be a little cross with her for being so hard to track sometimes. The funny thing about Mary is that before my Genealogy Do-Over, I didn’t even think Mary was that contrary. It’s all these new rules I put in place for myself. They keep me second and third guessing everything!
Mary E. Johnson is the first time that my Genealogy Do-Over has made me sweat. It would be easy to just add in the family I believe to be hers and continue working off that assumption. The problem with that being, can I prove that is actually her family? The answer to that is nope, not even a little bit. It’s going to be so bad of me to admit what I thought before, but I have to do it. That’s the whole point of starting fresh.
The following record is the first record I am able to use to see into Mary’s life before she married. My great-grandfather’s birth certificate just gives her maiden name, which helped, but doesn’t say anything about her parents.
It came yesterday! Well technically it came on Saturday. We usually get Saturday’s mail when we’re out getting Sunday’s paper. It’s just the way we work it. I can’t believe this baby was in the mailbox all night and I didn’t know it! I ordered this record online on August 1st. I was prepared to wait 4 to 6 weeks like normal. I can’t believe it’s already here.
I have to move past that though and actually look at the record. It was two pages. In fact I was very familiar with the format of it because I’ve been transcribing some marriage records like this for FamilySearch indexing in my spare time. The first page was a bit harder to read but it does give me a few things. It gives me the marriage date of 23 Apr 1896. So now I know that Robert married just 6 months before his mother passed away. It also gives the witness to wedding, one Sarah T Adams. Since the person marrying Robert and Mary was named J S Adams, I’m going to take a stab in the dark and say Sarah was his wife.
Now onto the page pictured on the left. The address of 1845 Broadway is actually new. I hadn’t seen that one. Looking it up on Google though, it’s not out of the circle that the Moores lived in during their time in Brooklyn and it’s almost right next to the cemetery where they would bury Robert’s mother in 6 months. Robert’s occupation as an Insurance Agent is nothing new to me. He definitely did that for awhile. Father was William H Moore. Still all good information. Oh wait, there it is. Mother’s Maiden Name. I won’t keep this from you. When it comes to finding out this woman’s maiden name I have the worst luck in the world. When I got the record out of the envelope, I was so scared to even look for this section. Imagine my surprise when it wasn’t blank! It’s always blank! Not this time though. Looks like her maiden name was Starret. I could be wrong but it’s definitely a starting point!
Now lets move onto Mary E Johnson. The only things I’d known about her was what was listed on censuses and William’s (her son) birth certificate. The residence of 196 Macon Street, Brooklyn definitely gives me a starting point for her. Imagine looking for Mary E Johnson in Brooklyn, with parents born in Ireland. Now we move down the record to her parents. Oh! Oh! I’m just going to cry now, both her parents are listed. Arthur Johnson as her father and Annie Moffot (?) as her mother! Of course, if anyone has better ideas for the mother’s name, just let me know. I’m open to discussion.
I did a quick search of Arthur Johnson with a wife Annie. Believe it or not, the best matches came to a family living in Babylon, New York in 1870 and 1880. I want to look in the New York State Censuses before I rush to judgement though. I especially want to look in the 1892 one. That would be 4 years before this marriage, so I would imagine that would be my best chance of a good match!