15 September 2012

Funeral Notice Mentions One Son and I Needed NJ

Death notices are not always particularly full  of relationships, but occasionally one gets a clue. This funeral from February of 1906 mentions the home of Hector C. Watson's son James T. Watson. The name James was fairly common in this family, so a son with that name was not a surprise, but confirmation is nice.

Date: Sunday, February 18, 1906  


Paper: Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, PA)  obtained on  Genealogybank.com

I'll be honest--I'm not a city kid, so I am not really certain what "carriages meet trolley" means, but I do know what interment at Penn's Manor means. 

Searching for Watson was a little bit easier a I had his year of death and I knew that he resided in Philadelphia. With a last name like Watson, one has to have additional search parameters in order to have results lists that one can reasonably navigate. In this case, I did restrict my results to focus on hits  from Pennsylvania newspapers. 


Search screen  on  Genealogybank.com 
Turns out I should not have restricted my search on   Genealogybank.com to just Pennsylvania. A "copy and pasted" death notice was also located in the Trenton Evening Times from Trenton, New Jersey, on 15 February 1906.
Next step is to find Hector in the 1900 census. City directories are also advised as I don't have those and urban research usually indicates that directories be accessed.