Ancestry Research Day
We drove across the street to Perkins again for breakfast. Needed nourishment before treking 40 miles across the more and more and more farm landscape.
We arrived in the city of Woonsocket (the county seat) about 11:30 AM and decided to stop at the newspaper office first to see if we could find the newspaper wedding announcement of Carrie Van Metre and Roy Jacobus' (my father's parents). The Woonsocket News (now the holder of all county newspapers) was getting ready to release the weekly paper, so the reporter asked us to come back tomorrow at 1 PM.
Next stop: The Sanborn County courthouse (across the street from the paper). The clerk, Lynn, (yes, we ended up spending so much time with her, we were on first-name basis) was able to locate my grandparents' wedding license. So, I purchased a certified copy of that. There was an unfamiliar name listed as a witness: Paul Jacobus. Now, who is he? Brother? Uncle? Father? Cousin? I have no idea if Roy even had brothers and sisters.
I purchased a copy of my father's birth certificate.
We also found Letcher High School graduation records that listed my father's two eldest siblings. We received copies of listings that he and his four siblings attended school in Letcher up until 1930. Then, all school records ceased. A mystery to be solved. (Note that the two eldest siblings had graduated by 1930.)
We were trying to get documentation that a prominent resident of Letcher, Uncle Lu--as we knew him, was actually Roy's brother. No luck. Uncle Lu's kids were my parents' age and had visited us in the past. But, I have no idea at my ripe ol' age, what the relationship actually was.
Until 2002, when it was torn down, there was a Jacobus School that was named after an Erastus Jacobus. We did find the Erastus Jacobus' farm (land) and the school had been located diagonally across the street from the farm, so I assumed he owned both pieces of land. But, is he relation?
Lynn told us that there were 3 headstones in a cemetery in Letcher that were Jacobus'.
Lynn also produced the Letcher Centennial book (1883 - 1983) that Janice was bringing to Norma for us to look at. So, I spent quite a bit of time reading the book trying to find the Jacobus or Van Metre names. I got quite a bit of documentation and pictures for future use. But, what I found left more questions than I could answer.
After lunch at a cute cafe in the booming town of Moonsocket (you have NO idea how small these metropolis' are), we went back to the courthouse to continue our search through deed books to see if we could find the location of Roy's farm. But, it would require hours of searching. By the time we got back to the courthouse, I was beet red from the heat in the office. So, Dave insisted we call it a day, skip the search, and head back to the RV.
When we got back to the RV, Norma met me with the book that Janice had brought. Norma had been digging all day and she shared that information as well. She had also run into an old timer from Letcher (80 yrs young) that lives in the house that Uncle Lu (and his wife, Aunt Bessy) lived in. He offered for us to come and see the house if we wanted to. But, we declined because we still weren't sure who Uncle Lu was, it wasn't my grandparents' home, and it really didn't mean much to me at this point.
After we cooled down a bit, I fixed hot dogs and baked beans for dinner.
My head was spinning with all the questions I had unresolved. In that spinning head, I realized we needed to find the exact location of the property before trying to go through deed books that are filed by Plat and not by name. So, we decided to visit the city of Letcher to see what we could find out, go to the cemetery to look for headstone clues, and to see the town where my dad had lived. I certainly had a restless sleep!
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