My Serendipity Moment

My friend Susan LeBlanc frequently writes about serendipity moments for her blog, Gopher Genealogy. I experienced a serendipity moment myself recently. In a previous post “Just One Thing” I wrote about how learning one last name led to an abundance of information about the family of Sally Maud Minton Beaman, a family I have been researching for years. I thought Maud’s mother, Susan Alice Farrington, must have died some time after the 1910 Rockingham County, North Carolina, census as I was unable to find any more references to her.

Just One Thing

Just one thing. Sometimes that all it takes to rocket you into the past. One little detail can make all the difference. In this case it was a name. Ellington.

The Minton family of Rockingham County, North Carolina, was a frustration to me. I knew that Sally Maud Minton Beaman (1890-1972) was from North Carolina. She met and married Oscar Wakefield Beaman (1888-1975) there, then moved to West Virginia. I had lots of Beaman data, but the Minton family eluded me.

Years ago, before the proliferation of online information, I located the family in North Carolina, in both the 1900 and 1910 U.S. census. I was sure it was Maud’s family; the little information I had fit the census listing. I knew that Sally Maud had two brothers, Giles and Plummer. What puzzled me- there was no Mame in the census. Maud had a sister named Mame, or Mamie, as she was fondly called. I know for certain she lived in Huntington, West Virginia, during the 1950s and 1960s; I know the house she lived in. The females of the family in the 1900 Rockingham County, North Carolina, census are Susan A., the wife, and daughters Lessie, Mary E. and Sallie M. Where was Mame?