Pursuing the (Digital) Paper Trail

Don's grandfather, August Ben Fingleman, was married twice, and his second wife, Ollie Ann Lloyd, was Don's grandmother. August's first wife was named Annie, and she died at a relatively young age between 1916 and 1918, leaving five young children.

Many years ago we had Annie's last name in our family tree as "Stansbury", but we changed it at least ten years ago, based on information that we believed to be reliable, to "Landry". Annie was buried in an unmarked grave in Linney Cemetery in Dayton, Texas. The only information we had been able to find about her was her approximate birth date, the approximate date of her marriage to August, and the fact that she was from Louisiana.

Then Don's Aunt Frances came across the marriage certificate for August and Annie, and sent us a copy. The first revelation was that Annie's maiden name was, in fact, Stansbury. Annie Josephine Stansbury, it turns out, married August Ben Fingleman in Patterson, St. Mary Parish, Louisiana on July 22, 1903. Witnesses signing the marriage certificate included one Adlai Felterman.

Armed with this new information we began to search online records for more information. Quickly we found Annie on the 1900 Federal Census of St. Mary Parish, age 16 years, living with one Adlai Felterman, who was identified on the census record as her grandfather.

Within a few more minutes, a marriage certificate for Sarah Felterman and L.A. Stansbury, in St. Mary Parish on October 5, 1872 was located online, as well as census records for Adlai Felterman from 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880. From these records we learned that Adlai's wife was named Josephine, and that in addition to their daughter Sarah, they had three sons named Earnest, Adam and Joseph. Sarah was the oldest of the four, having been born in 1849, and she was found living with her parents on the three censuses before her marriage to L.A. Stansbury in 1872. Earnest, born in 1858, was found living with his parents on the 1860, 1870 and 1880 census, as was Adam, born in 1859. The youngest son, Joseph Lee Felterman, was born in 1861 and resided with his parents in 1870 and in 1880. We have not found records of Adlai and Josephine after 1880, but their granddaughter Annie Josephine Stansbury, born in 1883 and August Ben Fingleman's first wife, was given her grandmother's first name as her middle name.

Of Annie's father and mother, L.A. Stansbury and Sarah Felterman, we have discovered that in addition to daughter Annie they had four sons, named Charlie, Lennis, Richard and Andrew Jackson Stansbury.

Annie's brother Andrew was born December 26, 1878 in St. Mary Parish, and had three children that we know of with his wife Delphine Davis. He died in 1959 in Port Arthur, Texas, and we found his death certificate, confirming the names of his father and mother. His death certificate indicates that he was a retired baker, and 41 years earlier, while still living in St. Mary Parish, he signed a World War I draft registration card, stating that he was a self-employed baker.

So in a matter of a few hours we progressed from having Annie's maiden name wrong to giving her parents, grandparents, three uncles, four brothers, two nephews and a niece. And we never left home in the process. Thanks, Aunt Frances!