Turn the Page

Genealogy can be an adventure and sometimes a lesson in frustration. Today I was going through records I found for my great-grandparents. I looked at the marriage record on ancestry.com and noticed that I could go to the next record in the batch. So being curious, I clicked to advance the page. Well, the next page was actually the back of the marriage record. I didn't even know it had a back side! On the back were the names of the groom's and bride's parents. The name of my great-grandfather's mother did not match what I thought I knew. Oops!! It turns out that my great-great-grandfather was married not twice but three times. Just like the commercial for ancestry.com. I thought the mother of his children was Lillie Esther Shaw but she was actually wife number 2. Wife number 1 was Lizzie M. Philbrick - thus solving a family mystery of the identity of "Grammie Philbrick"  - a name my father's generation heard often but didn't know to whom it referred. It solved the mystery of Civil War enlistment papers, for a Benjamin Philbrick, in the possession of one of my cousins. And of course, it has sent me on a new hunt for ancestors - a new adventure. I'd done a pretty good job of tracking down the ancestors of Lillie Shaw but they are not actually related not me...oh well. The lesson I am taking from this is to TURN THE PAGE. You never know what you might find. 

Francis L. Cotton & Lizzie M. Philbrick

Ray Everett Cotton & Annie Florilla Gibbs

Fern Lyndell Cotton - my grandmother