Smith&Smith

                                                               My Great Great Granny

 

   Ida Harriet Smith - b. 5 Sep 1856 d. 5 Aug 1936

I reached a little confusion a while back when I had a lot of documents on my Mother's Maternal Great grandparents, but for the life of me, I could not come up with a maiden name for my mom's great grandma.
    We knew my grandma's father was A.J Smith. We also knew his father was Adoniram Judson Smith. In fact, I had so much on the Smith's I was back to the 1700's. But I could not figure out what Adoniram Judson's wife Ida's maiden name was. Be it Marriage return records, Death returns, cemetery records.... All I got was Smith. It wasn't until a death record when the thought occurred to me.... Is her maiden name also Smith? In Hiawatha, Michigan? This tiny tiny place? I admit it; Thoughts of first cousins marrying each other immediately popped into my brain. (For the record, I always tend to think the worst.....) but, Eww. I was hoping I was wrong.
   Whew! I was.
 I was able to get in touch with a half 3rd cousin who had an article that had been printed in the local newspaper up there about the Smith's. Ahem, excuse me, the "Extraordinary Smiths." (Hey, I'm not bragging, it's what the article said!)  :)  And it was confirmed then by the descendants... they were absolutely positively from separate Smith lines. Well Thank God!!!    ...and then I was embarrassed it didn't dawn on me earlier that her maiden name was probably Smith. Duh. But I digress....

     So here I am now, with my lovely great great grandmother, Ida Harriet Smith, b. 1856. I have found that her parents are Charles Smith, and Mary Reynolds. Charles' parents are Charles Smith and Laura G.(I assume it's a G, the handwriting was unclear) King. And there I stop. I can find nothing on Laura or Charles so far.

      I've reached out and got a response from ANOTHER distant cousin (The genealogy community is wonderful, have I mentioned that?) who happened to be a professional genealogist and is having a tricky time sorting out Ida's Smith line....uh oh. I'm no where near a professional.... how on earth am I going to get anywhere on this? But this cousin informed me they've had a lot of luck finding these Smith's in Google Books. (and have I mentioned yet how much I love Google Books and the gems of info I've found with it? I have to do a separate blog post on that....) I've tried looking for her Smith's with GB, but came back with nothing. I think I'll try some different combinations of info for the searches and see what I get. At least it's confirmed that it's out there.... I just have to dig it up. Wish me luck!!



The picture of Ida above was given to me for my records by a half 3rd cousin I've found in my Smith searchings. He's been a wonderful help when it came to exchanging information and pictures of the Smith family. Thanks Paul!