While doing this, I noticed that he had another sister—Mary Irene—whom I knew nothing about (she went by Irene). I remember my mom mentioning that she had passed away, but she didn’t know a date. According to my mom she had some mental disabilities, and had to be taken care of by relatives. She never married nor had any children, and evidently did not have a social security number because I could not locate her in the SS Death Index. The only scrap of evidence I had of her whereabouts was a letter that a genealogist had written to my mother saying that one of my mother’s cousins had mentioned in a letter that “Aunt Irene” had had a stroke and was in a nursing home.
I found her in the 1930 Census, showing her listed with her mother, Mary, as living with her mother’s brother in Natrona, PA. Her father had left Mary and was never heard from again, and so it seems the uncle was taking care of them. Mary died in 1942, and after that I couldn’t find anything to locate Irene. My mom says her father used to send money to help with Irene’s caretaking, but I don’t know if she was in an assisted living home or living with relatives. I wrote to my mom’s half-brother to see if he knew anything about her. He supplied me with a few anecdotes about Aunt Irene, but did not know her death date or place. At that time I was not able to clear her name without an exact death date because of the Church’s guideline that without an actual death date you must wait at least 100 years from the birth date before performing vicarious ordinances.
I felt I had exhausted my leads, so I decided to wait until enough time had passed to submit her name for temple work. In the meantime we moved to Kaysville. I still wanted to find her death date for personal reasons. A year ago I went to the Family History Center in Salt Lake to see if I could find anything new. I checked the 1910 census and noticed her birth year was written down wrong on my mom’s family group sheet. Now that I had a correct birth date, I decided to request a death certificate search from Pennsylvania. I didn’t know the exact year she died, so I had them look within a ten-year range. $35 later I did not have a death certificate. They told me they did not find any matching records. So then I thought I would try to verify her birth date by obtaining her birth record. $10 later, I still had nothing. I was beginning to wonder if she actually was a real person!
When Bishop Hoggard encouraged us to prepare our 4 generation charts, I still had this nagging feeling about finding Irene’s death date and whatever else I could learn about her. No one else on my mother’s side is doing family history work, and I felt responsible for “finding” this great-aunt of mine who had essentially fallen through the cracks of our family history. She was the only child from that marriage who had not received the blessings of being sealed to her parents. I went to the Family History Center in Kaysville hoping to get some advice. They told me enough time had passed, and I could submit her name for temple work, which a very nice missionary gentleman helped me do. I am taking her name to the temple when we go to do baptisms with the Priests and Laurels on April 22nd.
But I still wanted to know for myself when she died for my own record. I thought maybe Irene might have been buried near her mother since she had never married. I knew her mother Mary was buried in Prospect Cemetery in Tarenton, PA. We did a grave search on the internet, and found several sites that listed her mother and grandparents being buried at Prospect Cemetery, but no record of Irene. Those databases are compiled by volunteers, and don’t necessarily have every grave listed. To get a complete listing you have to contact the cemetery office.
So the missionary told me about a free service called Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK). You can look up volunteers by state who have listed the types of service they will perform, such as looking up obituaries and taking pictures of headstones. They do these services for free or a small fee. I contacted a lady in western Pennsylvania who offered to take headstone pictures. I only asked her to take photos of the graves I knew were there for sure:
Arnold, Mary Schweitzer, b. 10 Dec 1876, d. 12 May 1942 (Irene’s mother)
Schweitzer, Anna Arnold, b. 18 Sep 1849, d. 6 Oct 1928 (Mary’s mother, Irene’s grandmother)
Schweitzer, Charles, b. 20 Jan 1879, d. 8 Mar 1954 (Mary’s brother, Irene’s uncle)
Schweitzer, Daniel, b. 27 Aug 1843, d. 1 Apr 1921 (Mary’s father, Irene’s grandfather)
Schweitzer, Frederick, b. 1875, d. 1896 (Mary’s brother, Irene’s uncle)
I did not specifically ask her to look for Irene’s grave. I hoped that if she went there in person, she might find it in the family plot. She agreed to do the service for .25 cents a mile. A few days later, I received this email:
Hello, Here are the pictures as promised. I had a hard time finding the plot due to there was no one at the office. I spent about 3 hours searching the cemetery and finally found it. I hope this is what you needed. If you have any questions let me know. Lisa
This was the first picture attached. Lo and behold! Right there was Irene’s headstone with birth and death dates. And she included another close up of it too:
Through this experience, I have been surprised at how interested I have become in a person that I never knew. I really didn’t even know my grandfather, and yet I have developed a sense of urgency for seeking out his sister and making sure she is sealed to her parents. I have also been surprised at how being persistent has brought the desired results. I could have stopped when her name was cleared for temple work. There really was no obligation to find her specific death date, yet something inside me really wanted to know for sure. It has been very satisfying to have found someone who had been overlooked only two generations back. Now I can put that date into our family group record and have it be complete. I look forward to doing Irene’s temple work and completing their family unit by having her sealed to her parents.