Pray Marriage Certificates

These confirm that Maude Pray and Beatrice Pray are Louise Marie Pray's sisters. She was a witness in each of their marriages!

Disappointments and Discoveries

The social security application I ordered for Louise Marie Pray arrived this weekend. It turns out that she didn't fill out the application, but filled out a different form when applying for some type of welfare and was then given a social security number. As you might guess, there was no information about her parents on that form. I'm not even sure she filled it out because there is hardly anything there and it is fairly inaccurate.

So, I decided I really needed to buckle down and get all my sources and information together to figure this out. I organized it all by the Pray sister it belonged to- Beatrice Mary Pray-Smith, Maude Pray-Stuart, and Louise Marie Pray-Chabin.
I discovered pretty quickly that I had a lot of information to look up for the two sisters.

I found that Marion and Maude moved to Californi sometime in 1924. I found them in the 1930 voter registrations, which also includes their address. I saw that the address was the same in 1928, 1930, and 1932, so I figured it was a fair assumption that they were at that address when the 1930 census was taken.

1930 California Voter Registration List

So, I realized I was going to have to find their record the old fasioned way, by where they lived. I marked their residence in a map, and Ancestry.com allows you to browse the images, and you can do it by the districts, and it gives the approximate location of the districts. I went through hundreds of images and I finally found it!

1930 US census

As you can see, their name was incorrectly written in the census (no wonder I couldn't find them easy!) But it gave me great information about their children (ALSO BORN IN MONTANA).

Gold mine.

I discovered that I didn't do much research on Beatrice's line, so I pursued that as well. Smith is, unfortunately, a very common name. Since two of the sisters were in California by 1930, I figured, what are the chances the third is there too? I refined my search to only Los Angeles county, and to a few other specific dates, and I was able to locate Beatrice in the 1930 census.

1930 US census

She had one child by then, ALSO BORN IN MONTANA. 

Now, my goal is to locate where they all lived when their children were born in montana. I found that Marion Stuart registered for WWI in 1917ish while living in Wyoming.

Marion Irving Stuart - WWI Registration Card

Another piece of the puzzle.

Maloney Line

Well, after doing further research into the Maloney line, I discovered that all the work has been done over there!
That means I get to focus more on my direct lines.

Maloney Line

I received a letter notifying me that the social security office received my request for records and that it should be completed within 30 days. Yay!

In the meantime, I started working on another line:

Marie Agnes Maloney is the wife of Harry Wheeler Chabin, brother of John Able Chabin, Sr. Harry Wheeler Chabin is my Mom's Grandma's Uncle.

Marie Agnes Maloney was born to Richard E Maloney and Amelia Ryan (parent's name gathered from Chaffin book of descendants). I found them, and found Richard's parents, Patrick Thomas Maloney and Mary Anne McCarthy.

Richard E Maloney and Amelia Ryan-Maloney's Gravestone. I still have no idea who Kathryn is. I have been able to identify all their children, none of which is a Kathryn, or anything close to that. We'll see if I can find out who it is eventually.

Photos of Henry K Miller and Louise Marie Chabin-Miller

Here are some photos of them:

Louise Marie Chabin when she graduated from High School (photo was found with her diploma)

Henry K Miller when he joined the Navy. He joined when he was 17, lied about his age to get in.

Henry K Miller

Louise Marie Chabin-Miller

Henry K Miller, Louise Marie, and my grandpa (the boy)

Scanning

I just finished scanning a batch of photos from my grandfather's side of the family. Once I get people identified I'll post them for your enjoyment!

Beatrice Mary Pray- Smith

Well, I got back the results from New Orleans, Louisiana that Beatrice was not born there. Sad day.
I'm still waiting for Louise Mary Pray-Chabin's social security application, which I'm hoping will be the turning point in my research.

New FamilySearch Duplicates

So, I was setting up my new.familysearch.org account so that I could have all my genealogy research online to use. It took me a while to get it set up, but I got it all up there. Now, the problem is that the further back the lines go, the more duplicates there are. I've spent about 2 hours resolving duplicates, and I'm still working on them!

Luckily, this gives me something to do while I wait for the birth certificate research request from Louisiana to come back.

Beatrice Mary Pray-Smith

I found her death certificate, and her son's birth certificate at the library today. Yay!

The interesting thing is that Albert Smith was born in the same county as Louise Marie Pray's children.

Maude M Pray and Marion I Stuart

I made a breakthrough!

My only lead on Marion Stuart was the marriage index I found. I have not gotten the marriage certificate yet, but when I looked in the Denver city directory, I didn't find any Marlon, but a Marion, who was a plasterer. I looked in earlier and later directory years and found he was only there from 1910-1912. I tried to find other family, but I found none living with him.

I did a search for the name in the Denver directory, and found a California Death Index for a Marion I Stuart born 29 Dec 1883 in Iowa and died 19 Mar 1973 in Los Angeles. What are the chances all the Pray sisters ended up in Los Angeles together????

Well, I continued to search using the specifics found from the California Death Index. and I found a census record with his family:

Stuart family starts on Line 27

And then I searched a little more and found his World War I Draft Registration Card. This item was GOLDEN because guess who was listed as the closest relative? That's right. Maudie.

 Now I know more about the husband, and I'm looking for them in censuses right now. I'll update later.

Time to Digitize

My husband and I attended the family history and genealogy class at sunday school today. It was great! Brother Ray is an amazing teacher (and I'm sure it helps that he's taught it for a LONG time). The biggest lesson I've learned is of the importance of digitizing.
We have the technology to make things digital, and it's benefits are manyfold:

1. Everyone can have a copy of Mom's scrapbooks, great-grandma's journals, etc.
2. Keeps contents of documents and/or photographs eternal through digital storage.
3. Takes up a TON less space (physical space, that is)
4. Encourages others to participate in the family history efforts because everyone has everything!

So I am going to start another blog for my immediate living family members. Basically for all those who are not labeled as "living" on our four generation sheets. At that blog, which I will make private so ask for an invitation, I will post stuff on our living family history. It will be awesome.

My end of the deal is to make things available to everyone. Your end of the deal is to give things to me to make available to everyone.

My request is for everyone to send me your photos, special documents, etc that you would like digitized. We just learned that here at our local family history center (in the BYU library) they have a high tech super awesome document/photo scanner. It's one that you can put a stack of photos and it takes them and scans them all for you. Talk about awesome. And so for our last year here in Provo, I would like to take advantage of that machine and digitize all of our family history. So send it my way.

I'l post the name of the blog once I get it started!

Updates on Beatrice Mary Pray-Smith

So, after I posted the last post, I continued to do research. Honestly, it bugs me to pieces when I can't find stuff I should be able to find.
So I decided to take a different approach. I was going to find out of the Beatrice Marie Pray from the California Death Index source posted previously was in fact THE Beatrice Mary Pray I was looking for.
So I started to look for her obituary. I knew she was living in Los Angeles. I decided to look in the Long Beach Independent, because that is the same newspaper that I found Louise Marie Pray's obituary. That would mean they were living close around the same time.

And sure enough, I found it:

It still wasn't conclusive, whether this was the same person I was looking for.

So I decided to keep looking.

Since I wasn't having much luck finding either the husband or wife, I decided to look for the son. This led me to find them rather quickly.

Family starts on Line 39

And I looked, and did some math to see if this was the family I was looking for:

William A Smith: age 52 born about 1878, married at age 32, about 1910

Beatrice: Age 42 born about 1888 (why had this record not shown up before?????), married at age 25, about 1913.

Albert Smith: born about 1915.

Since this family has a tendancy to have incorrect dates in the census, I realized this HAD to be the right people.

Now I'm going to get the death certificate for Beatrice and find more information on her son.

Beatrice Mary Pray-Smith

This is one of Louise Marie Pray-Chabin's sisters... at least I think. This is seriously the only thing I've been able to pull up with my recent discovery of her sisters' married names. Rather disappointing.

If you find any information, please forward it to me.

Biography of Able W. Chabin Sr.

I found this in the history of Able W Chabin Sr. in the Pottawatomie County, Kansas History book. Pretty cool:

Sisters of Louise Marie Pray

Well, today proved to be rather disappointing. I realized that if Louise Marie Pray-Chabin got married in Denver, Colorado, her sisters probably did too. We were going up to Salt Lake City anyways today, so we made a quick 5 minute stop at the Family History Library to check the Denver State marriage index.

and I found them!

Beatrice Pray married William A Smith on August 27, 1910

Maude Pray married Marlon Stuart on Nov 4, 1911.

This was super exciting news. Until I tried to find ANY of those four individuals in the 1920 and 1930 census records. That really stinks. I'll probably have to wait until I get copies of their marriage certificate to see if the spellings/dates are correct as indexed. That's really my only hope for finding them at this point... The names are too common, and I don't have any idea how old William or Marlon are.

To add insult to injury, I looked in the Denver city directories and found like 20+  William Smiths and one Marion Stuart (not Marlon). So we'll see how this search goes.

My Dead End: Louise Marie Pray

I wish I had a photo of Louise Marie Pray. But apparently my grandfather's mother, Louise Marie Chabin, disowned her later in live, resulting in our family knowing really nothing about her. But here is what I do know:

My mother gave me the birth certificate of her grandmother, Louise Marie Chabin. That was basically the wall she hit doing family history. I noted that her mother was Louise Marie Pray, born in Iowa, and father John A Chabin born in Petersburg, Illinois. I proceeded to search for them in the census.

I found them in the 1910 census living in Denver, Colorado as boarders. I noticed that this census listed Louise Marie Pray's birth location as Louisiana, and birth year about 1886.  I then begn to search local marriages around 1908-1909 for their marriage, because it indicated that they were married for 1 year, with no children. And I eventually found it!

She married John Able Chabin on September 26th, 1908 in Denver, Colorado. I found it interesting that they were married by the district judge, instead of some religious pastor. I wonder if this is because they were of different religions and/or if their marriage was opposed by their family. I noted that the certificate listed Louise Marie Pray as being "of" Colorado.

I've located the family in the 1920, and 1930 census, and those sources listed her birth location as Louisiana, and Colorado, respectively. So, I've got 3 places they could be...

I decided to do more recent research to find out more about her. I obtained the birth certificates of her other two children, Cecelia Irene, and John A:

To my relief, both listed the same location for her birth: Louisiana. One says New Orleans, Louisiana. So I immediately sent a search request in new orleans for her birth certificate. And they found none.

I looked through the deaths on the Ancestry website and found one Louise M Chabin born April 15, 1886
(California death index), a Louise M Pray born 7 Dec 1888(SSDI) and another Louise Pray born 5 May 1885 (SSDI). I decided that since women tend to keep their married name til death, I figured the first was my ancestor. I ordered the death certificate and I knew I was right:

I knew I was right because while waiting for documents to arrive, I worked on tracing forward the descendants of Louise Marie Pray's other children, to find other living relatives to help. And I came across Madelyne as the daughter of Cecelia Irene.

This document has been very valuable, since it lists the names of her parents, John and Mary. But it also lists the birth place as Colorado. I'm hoping to be able to contact someone on that end of the family (apparently my grandfather may be able to contact them) to get more information.

In the meantime, I went on Footnote.com and found Louise Pray in the Denver City Directory:

And I found her mother, and that she had two sisters, Beatrice and Maude. I also noted that they moved to Colorado in 1906, Louise Marie got married in 1908, and in 1911 Beatrice and Marie (or Mary, her mother) are no longer in Denver, and in 1912 Maude is no longer in Denver.

So far, searching for Louise Marie Pray's sisters has returned no results in any census search. I cannot find Louise Marie Pray or John Able Chabin in the 1900 census, which would provide a lot of great information.

My next step besides contacting Madelyne, would be to order Louise Marie Pray's Social Security Application. I'm assuming that she filled out the form herself, and that perhaps that will help me locate her family, and location of birth. Unfortunately, those documents are $27 a piece, when they used to be like $6. I'll have to save up for that.

Welcome!

I'm so excited to kick off my very own genealogy blog. I've been doing family history and genealogy research for my family for 4 years and counting. I had three main reasons for starting this blog:

1. To inspire others to do their own family history
2. To connect with others working on the same lines as me
3. To show off my research to family and friends

I hope that you will be inspired, and take advantate of some of my tips sprinkled throughout the blog. If you're just getting started, click on the "how to get started" page for tips. If you're already started, check out my link list to see the sites I use for research.

Either way, enjoy the blog, learn a lot, and let's grow together.