Louise's Lost Files - Certificate of Marriage

This is part of my Louise's Lost Files Series in which I share with my readers some of the items I am inventorying, scanning and posting that came from my great-grandmother, Louise Lasiter's house in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

The first part I tackled were two small drawers of paperwork belonging to my great-grandmother. They contained basic household mail items such as bank statements, bills, and tax statements. Intermingled in these mundane household items, however, were a few items of genealogical significance including their original Certificate of Marriage shown below.

Marriage Certificate Louise Benson and James Putman Lasiter, from the personal collection of Ginger R. Smith

It says:

This Certifies

that on the Second day of December in the year of our Lord 1931,

J. Putman Lasiter and Louise Benson 

were by me united in Marriage 

at Tulsa, Oklahoma 

according to the Ordinance of God and Laws of the State of Oklahoma.

Witnesses: Udrah Kaemmerling and Conrad H. Grabradshi [sp?]

Otto LeRoy Curl, Ph.D., D.D.

Pastor University Methodist Episcopal Church

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A little bit about the physical condition of the marriage certificate:

It is a tri-fold and has a piece of braided cord punched through one seam so that when it's folded in 3, it can be tied on the outside. There is also an outer cover which you can kind of see in the scan if you look closely at the bottom. 

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A little bit about my great-grandparents: 

Louise Benson was 19 years old when she married James Putman "Put" Lasiter on December 2nd, 1931. She had been living with her family in Newby, Oklahoma in April of 1930 when the census was taken. According to the census, she was still attending school, so she must have been attending a junior college of some sort because she graduated from Spiro High School in 1929. 

An interesting tidbit of information was that Louise was pregnant with her first child Barbara when she married Put. And yes, I assure you that her first child was Put's. My grandmother and her sister Barb could have been twins, their likeness was so similar. 

James Putman "Put" Lasiter was 23 years old when he married Louise. He was living in Fort Smith, Arkansas with his parents when the census was taken in 1930. According to the census report, he was also attending school. 

I wish I knew how my great-grandparents met with one living in OK and the other living in AR about two hours away. Maybe I will find some clues in the rest of the boxes? In addition to this marriage certificate, I found their original marriage license and I also found a certified copy of the marriage license which was obtained in 1943. 

I wonder what the certified copy was required for? 

Why would someone need a certified copy of a marriage license 12 years after they were married?

They didn't buy their house until 1950, so it could not have been for a mortgage. Hmmm...interesting. 

Louise's Lost Files - Cancelled Checks

This is part of my Louise's Lost Files Series in which I share with my readers some of the items I am inventorying, scanning and posting that came from my great-grandmother, Louise Lasiter's house in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Last week I sifted through the two small drawers of paperwork belonging to my great-grandmother. They contained basic household mail items such as bank statements, bills, and tax statements. Almost everything was in their original envelops. The bank statements were from the two years prior to her death: 1995-1997. Inside the envelops containing the bank statements were also her cancelled checks. Among the cancelled checks I found this one:

It was addressed to me. My great-grandmother had sent me this check in 1995 when I was in my 2nd year of college in Burlington, Vermont. It was very nice of her to remember me.

This check is significant not only because it had been addressed to me, but also because it contains valuable genealogical information.

• It contains my great-grandmother's address
• It has my great-grandmother's Signature on it
• It has my name on it
• It has my signature on the back of the check along with the name of the bank I used in Burlington, VT (and the date it was cashed by me)
• It also has the name of the bank my great-grandmother used

I think the signatures are the big things that interest most genealogists. How many of your ancestors' signatures do you have?

The rest of the genealogically relevant information gleaned from this cancelled check ties in to the lives of both myself and my great-grandmother. It goes beyond just the genealogical facts that we are first interested in. It helps to build a picture of what life was like for those involved. 

So my tip of the day is, don't throw away things just because they don't tell you when someone was born, died, or married. Some day, this document might be the one piece of evidence you need to prove something! 

Louise's Lost Files

In December of 2014, my mother and I returned to Arkansas to clean out my grandfather's house. While we were there, my mother's maternal cousin brought over 3 boxes of family files that had come from my great-grandmother Louise Lasiter's house.

Louise Lasiter, 1955

My great-grandmother was born Thelma Louise Benson, January 1st, 1912 in Avant, Osage County, Oklahoma. She was the first child born to Barney Benson and Eva Dennis and became the oldest of eight children. She was a strong and independent young woman who graduated from Spiro High School in 1929. In the early 1930s she married James Putman Lasiter and they had 3 children: the oldest was Barbara Jean Lasiter, the middle child was James Putman Lasiter, Jr, and the youngest child was my grandmother, Sue Carolyn Lasiter. Unfortunately they have all passed away now. Louise and James "Put" Lasiter raised their three children in Fort Smith, Arkansas. They lived in the same house their whole life at 3720 Park Avenue. My great-grandmother lived in this house until she died in 1997. "Put" had already been gone for 20 years by then.

When my great-grandmother died, I was away at college. There had just been a big Christmas celebration and then she passed shortly after on the 27th of December.  After her death, her estate was divided between her three children, her personal belongings distributed or sold, and the house was sold and the profits also distributed between the three children. When my grandmother died in 2003, I helped my  mother clean out her house. Surprisingly I did not find anything from her mother, my great-grandmother's house. I assumed at the time that my grandmother had simply thrown everything out.

I did not become interested in genealogy until many years later. Then my mother showed me a couple of boxes of family photos that she had retrieved from my great-grandmother's house. She gave them to me in 2009. I inventoried and scanned all the contents and was able to extend the Lasiter tree out one more generation based on some writing on the back of a photo. But there were things missing. These boxes contained photos of my grandmother when she was young and of my mother and I throughout the years, and a few of my great-grandmother and her siblings, but nothing more from her Benson side of the family. I knew if my great-grandmother had kept any keepsakes from her childhood or from her parents, then they had to be in the boxes that were distributed to the other two children. And I was pretty darn sure my great-grandmother had kept some keepsakes. She kept everything and she wrote on everything!

Well you better believe that I sent letters to the children of my grandmother's oldest sister, Barbara. But they went unanswered. I queried her brother, but he too, said he didn't have anything. Now they are both gone. But his son surprised me. And guess what? His son is now interested in genealogy. Yep, he got the bug now too! And he decided to help me out.

I had found the genealogy gold mine!

I found room for 2 bankers sized boxes (they were bigger back then, by the way) and one small box that has two drawers in it on the trailer for the drive back to Georgia and then to North Carolina. I opened the boxes and you wouldn't believe what I found!

Photos of course! 

Bibles!

Bills! 

Letters!

School Report Cards!

More Photos! 

Three Boxes of Photos, Letters, and Family Memorabilia 

from my great-grandmother's house. 

Photo taken by Ginger R. Smith, 17 January 2015. 

My goal is to inventory all the items in these three boxes, preserve them, and scan the items of genealogical and historical value and post about them here, under Louise's Lost Files and share them on my Ancestry.com tree.  I will also be extracting genealogical data from the items and saving it to my genealogy software. My goal is to two-fold: to share the genealogy gold mine and to show how I can apply research methodology to extract genealogical data from the items within.

All posts relating to my great-grandmother's materials will be labeled with "Louise's Lost Files" followed by a brief description of their contents. I am estimating this project will take the better part of a year to complete. So stay tuned for more details! 

Keeping Track of My 2nd Great-Grandparents

I have 8 sets of 2^nd great-grandparents with a total of 16 individuals.

Paternal Line:

Set # 1: Claude Rual Smith (1896 - 1975) and Willie Harriet Riddle (1899 – 1985)

Set # 2: Fred Fox (1884 – 1974) and Melvina West (1882 – 1978)

Set # 3: John Milton Binns (1868 – 1961) and Perthinia “Pert” Eula Brooks (1873 – 1942)

Set # 4: Nathaniel Gustaves Hill (1873 – 1944) and Jessie Inez Barton (1875 – 1950)

Maternal Line:

Set # 1: Alvin Theodore Godwin (1879 – 1950) and Louella Davis (1882 – 1947)

Set # 2: William Edward Peters (1874 – 1948) and Dora King (1875 – 1912)

Set # 3: James Franklin Lasiter (1876 – 1968) and Rosalie Putman (1875 – 1961)

Set # 4: Barney Sheron Benson (1884 – 1952) and Eva Mae Dennis (1889 – 1983)

I was born in 1976. As you can see, two of my paternal 2^nd great-grandfathers died 1 or 2 years before I was born and 2 of my paternal 2^nd great-grandmothers lived to hold me in their arms (The obituary of one of my 2^nd great-grandmothers, Willie Harriet Riddle Smith, mentioned that she had 18 2^nd great-grandchildren!)

One of my maternal 2^nd great-grandmothers lived to hold me. I wasn’t the only one though. She had several other 2^nd great-grandchildren that she travelled around to visit with. Check out my 5-generation photos:

 Back Row: Sue Lasiter (my grandmother), Marilyn Godwin (my mother), Louise Benson Lasiter (my great-grandmother); Front: Eva Dennis Benson (my 2nd great-grandmother), Ginger R. Smith (me!). Taken March 1976, Fort Smith, Arkansas. From personal collection of Ginger R. Smith, inherited from Louise Lasiter. Copyright 2012. 

Back Row: Claude Rual Smith, Jr (my great-grandfather) and Willie Harriet Riddle Smith (my 2nd great-grandmother); Front: Tim D. Smith (my father), Ginger R. Smith (me), Darrel E. Smith (my grandfather). Taken 1976, Fort Smith, Arkansas. From personal collection of Ginger R. Smith, scanned from photo album of Barbara J. Smith, Copyright 2012. 

L to R: Reba Fox Smith (my great-grandmother), Ginger R. Smith (me),  Melvina West Fox (my 2nd great-grandmother), Tim D. Smith (my father), Darrel E. Smith. Taken March 1976, Fort Smith, Arkansas. From personal collection of Ginger R. Smith, scanned from photo album of Barbara J. Smith, Copyright 2012. 

Most all of my sets of 2^nd great-grandparents lived in Arkansas with the exception of the Bensons. I’m pretty lucky because the Arkansas death certificates started about 1914. I can actually probably take my ancestry back another generation to 3^rd or even 4^th great-grandparents just by using death certificate research!

As I said in my last post about requesting death certificates from the Arkansas Department of Health, it can become quite addicting and difficult to keep up with all of the requests and processing of incoming certificates. I try to space them out. I have employed the following two tables to help me with my research. They track my progress in securing and processing death certificates and obituaries. From looking at these tables I can see from a glance what I am missing.

From the tables I have filled out below, I can see that I have the obituaries and death certificates of 8 of my 16 great-grandparents. I am half way there! The obituaries I obtained either from family members or from various newspapers. My cousin, Doris Hamblin Smith, sent me copies of a bunch of Smith family obituaries in 2010 before she passed away.

In order to understand what the headers Scanned?, Transcribed?, FTF Notes?, and FTF Source? refer to, you must first know my genealogy work flow:

1.       Scan and save obituary and death certificate as a PDF, TIF, and JPG file

2.       Transcribe and save to Word document or Notepad File

3.       Copy the Transcript to the notes file for that person in my genealogy software

4.       Enter the Birth, Death, Burial, Occupation, Marital, etc facts into my genealogy software, including the parents' names

5.       Create a source and attach to the Facts (some call these "Events")

Nos. 3 and 4 are included under the FTF Notes heading in the table. FTF stands for “Family Tree File.”

As I collect more obituaries and death certificates, I can  update this table. I already know which death certificate I plan to order next – that of Rosalie Putman. However, since 6 of the remaining 8 died in Arkansas, I can go ahead and order them all at once.

Dora King died in 1912 in Missouri. I have not found a death record for her yet, probably because she died before deaths were required to be recorded. Family stories say she died of a snake bite. I might be able to find a death notice for her in a local newspaper. But I've found this to be difficult; or at least time consuming when you don't know the month and day. 

Barney Benson died while visiting his son in California. I have not yet ordered a death certificate from California, so this will be my first experience.

Obituary Resources
Name	Scanned?	Transcribed?	FTF Notes?	FTF Source?
Claude Smith Sr	yes	yes	yes	yes
Willie Riddle	yes	yes	yes	yes
Fred Fox	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Melvina West	No	No	No	No
John M Binns	No	No	No	No
Eula Brooks	No	No	No	No
Gus Hill	No	No	No	No
Jessie Barton	No	No	No	No
Alvin Godwin	No	No	No	No
Louella Davis	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
William E Peters	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Dora King	No	No	No	No
James F Lasiter	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Rosalie Putman	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Barney Benson	No	No	No	No
Eva Dennis	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Death Certificates
Name	Scanned?	Transcribed?	FTF Notes?	FTF Source?
Claude Smith Sr	yes	yes	yes	yes
Willie Riddle	No	No	No	No
Fred Fox	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Melvina West	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
John M Binns	No	No	No	No
Eula Brooks	No	No	No	No
Gus Hill	No	No	No	No
Jessie Barton	No	No	No	No
Alvin Godwin	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Louella Davis	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
William E Peters	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Dora King	No	No	No	No
James F Lasiter	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Rosalie Putman	No	No	No	No
Barney Benson	No	No	No	No
Eva Dennis	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

How do you stay organized? Does your genealogy work flow look like mine? If not, how does it differ? How is it similar? I’m looking forward to hearing how other people process the obituaries and death certificates they receive. 

Follow-up Friday 17 Feb 2012

Here's a list of goals I set two weeks ago in my Motivation Monday post of February 6, 2012:

1.     Process the Thomas Hume papers I photographed from UNC’s Southern Historical Collection.

2.     Process the O’Neal family papers I received from my new O’Neal cousin (determined by DNA test)

3.     Enter information on the William Godwin family of Escambia County, Alabama (whose descendant was determined to be a match to our line of Godwins from NC)

4.     Process the Barton family Find-A-Grave photos from Center Point Cemetery in Howard County, Arkansas that a volunteer uploaded for me

And here is my progress so far:

1.     No progress

2.     No progress

3.     I believe I have all of the information on William’s descendants entered into my RootsMagic database. We got sidetracked by trying to find information about a John Godwin from North Carolina who was found on a Revolutionary War Roll. Evidently he fought with a bunch of people who moved with William Godwin from North Carolina to Georgia and then eventually they all settled in Escambia County, Alabama together. It also seems that Zilla Godwin who married Jesse Baggett (one of the men who was on the Revolutionary War Roll and who moved to GA and then to AL with the others) might have been the same woman who was the daughter of Richard Godwin and Zillah Thomas who moved from Sampson County, North Carolina to Hancock County, Georgia about the same time my Nathan Godwin moved to Indiana. We have always believed this Richard was related to our line of Godwins, but  have been unable to determine how.

4.    Several Find A Grave memorials had already been created for my Barton ancestors in Center Point Cemetery in Howard County, Arkansas back in 2008 by FAG volunteers. I requested that photos be taken of the headstones and was notified this week that my request had been fulfilled and the photos uploaded by a volunteer. I compared the information in the memorial biography to what was on the headstones from the photographs that the FAG volunteer took. However, the resolution on many of the photos rendered them unreadable, even if I downloaded them and tried to zoom. So I emailed the volunteer and asked her to email me copies of the originals. I thought that the ones that were uploaded to FAG somehow lost resolution when they were uploaded. Unfortunately the ones she emailed me were just too low quality of resolution that I could not zoom to read them. They were 50-150kb in size. Maybe if she had set her camera to a little higher setting I would have been able to zoom in better? Oh well. Also, I’ve been struggling with creating a citation for my FAG entries in my RootsMagic database and although I finally settled upon some standard text, there was only one field in my RootsMagic source template that I could squeeze all of this text into. So I created a custom source template in my RM software in which I could enter the deceased person's name, memorial number, memorial creator's name and date, etc as separate fields. This made me much less stressful about creating my FAG source citations!

5.     My Mother’s Family  Finder DNA results came back, so of course I got distracted with those. She had 214 matches! Which for Family Finder is a LOT! Of those 214 matches about 90 of them were matches she and I had in common. She has a lot of 3^rd cousins as well and suprisingly, I have already received emails from 2 of her matches requesting information! (usually you have to beg and plead with people to get them to respond to YOUR emails). Unfortunately I have not been able to find a connection to them yet.

6.     Learned more about my JONES family. My 2^nd great-grandmother was Emily Jones and she married John Riley Lasiter. Jones was a possible common surname with one of my Mother’s DNA matches, so I did some research to see if I could find more information about Emily Jones. I found Emily and John Lasiter living in Madison Co., AR on the 1870 census report and then I found the family of Thomas and Saphronia Jones also living in Madison Co., AR in 1870. Going back to 1860, I found Thomas and Saphronia Jones with a daughter Emily C Jones who matched up to my Emily Lasiter. Based on the places of birth listed for the children of Thomas and Saphronia Jones on the 1860 census, I was able to determine that the family moved from TN to AR about 1851 and that Thomas and Saphronia Jones were probably married between 1840 and 1847 when Sally Ann Jones, the first child listed on the 1860 census, was born. I did a search on Ancestry.com in the Tennessee Marriage records for Thomas J Jones and found it right away: Thomas J Jones to Safrona Phelps, 18 Dec 1844, Davidson Co., TN. I followed it up with an 1850 Davidson Co., TN census record for Thos J Jones, 30 years old, Sophrona Jones, 26 years old, Sarah Jones, 4 years old, and Tennessee Jones, 1 year old. I have now taken my tree back another generation and learned of a new family name and location from which to start searching in!

Treasure Chest Thursday: Death Certificate of James Franklin Lasiter

James Franklin Lasiter was my 2^nd great-grandfather on my Mother’s Mother’s side. He was born April 16^th 1876 in Ione, Arkansas. He married Rosalie Putman on June 27, 1906 in Fort Smith, Arkansas. He died October 8, 1968 in Fort Smith, Arkansas. He was a barber and he lived with my great-grandparents in their family home on Park Avenue in Fort Smith, Arkansas until he died.

In July of 2011 I requested a copy of his death certificate from the Arkansas Department of Health. I had to fill out a form and include as much information that I knew. I knew when and where he died from his obituary.  It cost me $10.00. It arrived within 2 weeks. Here is the information I learned from this document:

[Click on the photo to make it bigger.]

James died at St. Edward's Hospital in Fort Smith, Sebastian Co., Arkansas. Fort Smith only has two hospitals, one on each side of town, either the North side or the South side. I believe this is on the South Side. Sparks Hospital, where I was born, is on the other side of town.

He resided at 3720 Park Ave, Fort Smith, Sebastian Co., AR at the time of death. He was living with his son, James Putman Lasiter and daughter-in-law, Thelma Benson Lasiter in the house where he himself grew up - A small two-bedroom on a corner lot. The enclosed porch acted as a third bedroom at times. My grandmother, the youngest child, had moved out a few years earlier.

He died at 5:30 pm, on October 8^th, 1968. He was 92 years old. His wife, Rosalie, had preceded him in 1961.

He was born Apr 16, 1876 in Ione, AR.

He was a Barber in a barber shop.

His father was John R. Lasiter and mother was Emily Jones. – Bingo! This is my treasure. I had suspected his Father was John Riley Lasiter as that was written on the back of a photo; however his mother’s name – Emily Jones – is news to me.

The informant was J. P. Lasiter of 3720 Park Ave, Ft. Smith, AR, 72901. This was his son, my great-grandfather, James Putman Lasiter, Sr.

He died of Uremia due to Nephrosclerosis from generalized arterio sclerosis, colitis, acute with bleeding; no autopsy was performed. He was attended by physician from Mar 65 to Oct 68. I’d say not bad for 92 years old!

He was buried at Forest Park Cemetery, Fort Smith, AR, on October 10^th, 1968 by Jesse G. Putman of 815 No. B Street, Fort Smith, AR, 72901. Jesse Putman owned the Putman Funeral Home. He was one of two big Funeral homes in the area. I do not believe there is any relation to James’ wife, Rosalie Putman, at least not that I ever heard from the family, but who knows.

Here is a photo of the Putman funeral home taken in 1977 at 815 No. B Street: 

Photo courtesy of Dr. Mo

And this is what it looks like today, converted to apartments:

Courtesy of Google Maps

The Putmans and Lasiters are all buried together in a huge family plot in Forest Park Cemetery. James Franklin Lasiter and his wife, Rosalie Putman Lasiter each have their own flat in-the-ground marker side by side next to Rosalie’s parents, Thomas and Martha (Ward) Putman.

Here is a photo of James Franklin Lasiter’s marker:

Forest Park Cemetery, Fort Smith, AR, taken by Ginger R Smith,
5 May 2006. "James F Lasiter, Apr 16, 1876 - Oct 8, 1968"