Charles Forshaw
Have you often thought about Uncle John who was so friendly to you as a youngster growing up? Uncle John became your favorite relative, but you lost contact with him as you grew older and eventually moved away from the area where he lived. Now let’s try and find Uncle John. Most all of your relatives connected with Uncle John are now deceased, but you do remember that he lived in Texas near the small community of Silver City and his wife’s name was Aunt Jo. Now let’s go to work on finding something about Uncle John.
Let’s try our luck at www.findagrave.com. Find-A-Grave is a computer website on which volunteers post pictures and information about persons buried in a specific cemetery in a given state, county and city. So let’s get on the computer and see if we can find Uncle John on www.findagrave.com. On the right side of the website home page is “Find A Grave.” Scroll down to “Search for a Cemetery” and click on it. Well we don’t know the name of the cemetery, so let’s enter what info we do have. We know John lived in the USA in Texas near or in Silver City, which happens to be in Navarro County. Now let’s click “search” and see what happens. Wow! We get a listing of all the cemeteries in Navarro County, Texas. With time and patience we look for a cemetery in or near Silver City. As you might guess it’s next to the last in the listing, so click on it and there it is “Younger Cemetery.” We cannot remember Uncle John’s last name, so we type in “John” in the first name space and click “search.” Now we get a list of all of the people in Younger Cemetery named John. Uncle John’s wife was named Aunt Jo, so looking down the list we find John Henry Farmer whose wife is Josephine. Voila! We find Uncle John’s birth and death dates along with a photo of his gravestone and even a copy of his death certificate. With this information we can now go to www.familysearch.org and find out more about our long lost Uncle John. If you can’t find your long lost “Uncle or Aunt Someone,” come to one of our Robson Genealogy Club meetings and let us help you find your long lost Someone. Please join us at one of our scheduled meetings, which are at 7:00 p.m. the first and third Tuesday of each month and a help session on the second Wednesday of the month at 2:00 p.m. All meetings are held in Room 104 of the CATC building. We look forward to seeing you there and to meeting your family.