Black Friday 2014 = Fun at the State Archives

Whoever wrote this must be a real exiting guy. This is one happenin' dude.  The easy answer is that I was off and they were not, and I am not big on real crowded malls - or empty malls for that matter.  So off I went to the archives, under the guise of getting my own birth certificate at the nearby Dept. Of Vital Statistics, not the archives, thank you very much.  However, after trying to park near vital statistics, I decided to do it on line, and stay at the archives.

My goal at the archives was to find a death certificate for Daniel O'Dea, brother of my great grandfather Michael O'Dea.  I know he was in Jersey City in the 1900 census, and I found him in city directories in 1901, 1902, and 1903.  In the 1910 census, his wife Mary is listed as a widow.  So I was able to quickly ind his death certificate on the second roll of microfilm that I checked.  Turns out he died on 26 Feb 1905, at his home at 244 Suydam Ave, Jersey City.  Cause of death - cancer of the neck, perhaps it is throat cancer and he was a smoker? Or chewed tobacco? I don't know, but it says he was sick for two years.  Doesn't sound like a fun two years though.  You will never guess where he is buried - Holy Name Cemetery, Jersey City, another shocker.  The other thing that I wanted to see is his mother's name, and it is listed as Catherine O'Dea (not Honora) but did not give her maiden name, DANG.  But now I know that Michael and Daniel had the same mother, Catherine and the rest of the siblings were born to Honora McGuan O'Dea.

Here is the death certificate that I found:

The one thing I didn't mention was how I found the death certificate so easily.  I checked the spelling O'Day first, it's pretty much a crap shoot on how they spelled it.  The microfilm has them in alphabetical order, so I just checked O'Day first before scrolling to O'Dea - saves me some time.  Next I tried Jersey City newspapers for an obit, but I came up empty.  The I tried to see if there was a will - again no dice. So my goal was reached, so it was time to leave.  But I just couldn't do it.

So I decided to look for wills from other ancestors, namely the Sterlings.  I couldn't remember looking up their names in the card file.  No Sterlings, and I then I thought a moment and remembered Margaret Sterling, she had married Thomas Keogh, had a baby girl, Helen, and soon thereafter she died.  I found Helen living with her grandparents, John and Mary Sterling, but I could never find Margaret's husband Thomas Keogh again.  So I checked for Thomas A. Keogh, and I found a will.  In the Will, he bequeaths $250.00 to his daughter Helen, BINGO!!!

The executrix is his wife Annie Keogh, and the will was signed on 8 Mar 1935.  After finding the will, I checked for a death certificate.  I found it, Thomas died 5 April 1935, less than a month after making his will.  The death certificate says that he lived at 299 Halliday Ave, Jersey City, and was married to the former Annie Kennedy - another Kennedy branch in the family.  He was born in Jersey City on on 22 Feb 1875 to John Keogh and Kate Glynn.  These are the same parents that appear on his marriage return from his marriage to Margaret Sterling.  This confirms that I have found the elusive Thomas Keogh, who is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in North Arlington.  He died of a carcinoma of the liver, so I guess he knew he was dying when he wrote out his will.  One last detail is occupation - he was a retired Jersey City Fireman at the time of his death.  If you remember, Mary Sterling married Michael Sheehan, a Jersey City Policeman.  That whole public service thing must be in the blood, it seems to have reached my brothers and I, and now my brother's son just got hired as a Policeman.

That's why I like finding cops and firemen in my research, it makes me feel more connected to them.