NUMBERED AMONG THE DEAD

While helping Luanne; writer of The Family Kalamazoo (A genealogical site devoted to the history of the DeKorn and Zuidweg families of Kalamazoo); to find newspaper items about the Spanish American War; I came across an interesting item in the 1898 “Wolverine Citizen” a Flint newspaper.

The item titled “NUMBERED AMONG THE DEAD”, Lieut. Ablino J. Babcock Dies of Typhoid Fever; gives the account of the death of a young Flint resident.

I put the information into a text file.

Flint, Michigan newspaper
Wolverine Citizen
July 30, 1898
Saturday
“Numbered Among The Dead“
The first death to occur among
the members of the Flint Union Blues…
Lieut. Ablino J. Babcock
died on Tuesday
Father: Dwight Babcock
Telegram: Siboney, July 26.-Ablino Babcock is dead…
Deceased was twenty-two years of age
a young man of sound business qualifications.

I thought the information in the item was sufficient enough for me to find a family tree for the young lieutenant. The item mentioned his father’s name “Dwight Babcock” and also his age twenty-two (22) years old. Since I had his death date based on the newspaper date, 1898 and his age from the body of the item, I was able to determine his date of birth which would be about 1875.

I tried a simple search on Ancestry.com for his name, age, death date and fathers name but did not find a family tree, so I created a tree with the same information.

What we know:

Name: Ablino J. Babcock

DOB: abt 1976 (age given in item)
DOD: Tuesday 26 July 1898 (Telegram)

Father: Dwight Babcock

City where young man lived: Flint (this local newspaper)

Once I created the tree the hints started appearing and as I added the hints on to the tree I was able to get good accurate official document information. I was able to find a family tree which had quite a few documents which confirmed the information I was finding. Usually I would stop my work on the tree at this point but I thought I could find more information because now I had the death dates of Ablino’s father and mother. I had been working on a Flint newspaper collection of Google News Archive and it had newspapers which covered the death dates so I went looking for obituaries for the father and mother. I found them.

From those obits I was able to find the grandfathers Obit.

I then found the “Find A Grave” pages for Ablino and parents.

After a few days of computer work, one trip to the Evergreen cemetery in Grand Blanc, Michigan; I now have a family tree that looks like this.

Tree Summary

66 People
31 Photos
1 Stories
97 Records
22 Comments

YET TO DO:

Hints
48 All people with hints
219 All hints
136 Record hints
37 Photo hints
46 Member tree hints

So it looks like I have to contact 46 Family Tree owners to tell them about this new branch of their family trees.

Names on Tree:

Allen, Babcock, Baker, Barney, Bidelman, Dewitt, Eaton, Goodall, Heale, Lamb, O’Dair, Pound, Pratt, Sheldon, Short, Sperry, Warren

I hope this little bit of information will give you hope in finding your long lost branch of your family tree.

Thanks