Social Security Claims and Application Index 1936 - 2007

This is a great database available on ancestry.com and it has led to some great discoveries in my research lately.  For example, this is how I found Helen Keogh and her family after her marriage.  It is really good for finding married names of female ancestors.  Before this was available, you had the Social Security Death Index, which told you when your ancestor died - sometimes it just gave the month and year, sometimes it also gave the day. But with this new index, you usually get the date of death and names of parents - including the mother's maiden name, which was always tough to find.  If your ancestor is female, it will usually give her maiden name, married name, and the date that they got around to changing the last name.

So I was looking through my family tree app for shaking leaves (hints) and I came across my Grandmother, Marguerite (O'Dea) Brady's brother: Leo O'Dea and his wife Veronica Walsh.  Leo is the man who changed the spelling of the last name to O'Day (although most of the O'Deas switched back and forth apparently)  Leo married Veronica Walsh and they had three children: Gertrude, William and Veronica.  The only one that I was somewhat familiar with was Veronica.  She became a Catholic nun and her name became Sister Eleanor Gertrude.  She was a member of the Sisters of Charity.

But Leo's wife Veronica is the one with the shaky leaf.  When I clicked on it, the Social Security Claims and Applications Index database came up and this was the result:

Even Social Security spelled the last name both ways (Odea and Oday).  But the thing that caught my eye was place of birth.  Gordon, PA!!!  Does that sound familiar??  Well, it certainly did for me. Gordon, PA is the small town in Schuylkill County, PA where my grandfather was born.  According to Wikipedia, the population of Gordon, PA in the 2000 Census was 781.  So you can imagine how many people lived there 100+ years earlier. My Grandfather Thomas James Brady was born 27 Aug 1891, and Veronica Walsh was born in the same small town a year later.  Then she marries my grandfather's brother-in-law, go figure.

A little more digging into this line, is about to yield a couple of 2nd cousins, who live within a couple of miles of me.  I'll have to let you know how that works out.