What do you know about those Van Pelts?

Almost a year ago, I commemorated the 100th wedding anniversary of my great-great-grandparents, Florence Van Pelt and Jesse Bartoo. Then maybe six or eight weeks ago, I received an email from a distant cousin. He told me how he was related, and asked what I knew about Samuel Van Pelt (Florence’s grandfather and my 4th great-grandfather.) So, I fired up the ol’ Family Tree Maker file and discovered that what I knew about Samuel Van Pelt amounted to . . . almost nothing!

Really nothing.

No interesting tidbits. No parents. No date of death, and even his birth was iffy. Some sources claimed he was born in New York, and others put him in Delaware. And the calculated birth years varied. A lot.

Getting that email about the Van Pelts spurred me into action. I started poking around in the Fulton History and Ancestry stacks. I found so many Van Pelt clippings for more recent generations that I might just start a Van Pelt Family Scrapbook page to collect them. However, I couldn’t find an obit for Samuel Van Pelt, and that was what I was really hoping for.

I turned to a stack of notes from a genealogy road trip from a few years back. I spent much of that trip racing the clock. With limited time, I had ducked in and out of the Potter County courthouse as fast as I could. As soon as the place closed at the end of business, my plan was to scour two or three cemeteries before dark.

My notes from that visit, unfortunately, reflect the finding-frenzy rather well. My methodology? Flipping pages of big birth and death index books as fast as I could and copying anything I cared about in a scrawl that I, at least, would understand. I entered the pertinent facts into my Family Tree Maker file when I got home from that trip.

On the second pass through my notes, I discovered a person of interest. (Tweet this!)

I found that a “Dane I. Van Pelt” was recorded in the death index. The interesting part? I couldn’t find any other record of Dane Van Pelt—no census records, no military registrations, no newspaper mentions . . . The trouble is, I can’t remember how legible (or not) that book of records was. The impression of memory, which could be totally wrong, is that it was neat and careful penmanship, reducing the odds that I misread the name considerably.

What if the handwriting was neat and careful because it was copied from another source?

The date of the record is about eight months after the date of the death being recorded, and even though the recorder was closer to the event than I am, the index is still a secondary record. Was that careful penmanship being copied from a messy or careless hand? Is there a possibility that “Dane I” was actually “Sam’l”?

It’s possible . . . But that’s a lot of supposing. I wish I could remember!

Tip: If you can’t make copies, note primary vs. secondary sources and rate the legibility of penmanship. (Tweet this!)

What am I hoping to prove here?

Here is what I wrote down for this person of interest:

Full Name of Deceased: Van Pelt, Dane ? I ?
Color: W
Sex: M
Age: 63
Condition: Married
Place of Birth: Delaware co.
Occupation: Laborer
Date of Death: 4/20/1898
Place of Death: Harrison
Cause of Death: Kidney Trouble
Duration of Illness: One week
Place Interred: Addison NY
Date Interred: 4/22/1898
Name of Father: Jake Van Pelt
Name of Mother: Jane Van Pelt
Recorded: Jan’y 13, 1899

I do try to avoid wedging discoveries in sideways to make them fit my theories, but I know you understand how a person might be motivated to see what she wanted to see in “Dane I.” If I could say for certain that this record was, in fact, about Samuel Van Pelt, that would be a lot of information, wouldn’t it?

I checked FamilySearch. GenWeb sites. Cemetery transcriptions. All came up empty.

And suddenly, I couldn’t remember whether I’d checked Fulton History before or after the big Christmas day upload. Once again, I went back for a second look.

Persistence, my friends, is the name of the game. (Tweet this!)

I’m not worried about the age discrepancy. We’ve established poor legibility in the primary source that the index recorder copied, and my existing sources for Samuel Van Pelt’s birth already range from 1825 to 1831. My opinion? The April 20, 1898 date on both sources makes the crucial match, with the death in Harrison PA and the burial in Addison NY as additional support.

Found: Samuel Van Pelt!

And needless to say, the search is on for Jake and Jane Van Pelt!

P.S. To any other Van Pelt cousins out there . . . 

Here is the rest of the Van Pelt information I copied that day and the source-citation. Click to view at full size. Good hunting! 😉

Please cite: Heineman, Brandy. “Motivation Monday: Second Passes on Old Searches.” Bookishness and other Beauties [online]. Published January 12, 2015. Accessed (date). Source: Potter County Courthouse, Record of Births, Book #1 (1893-1905). 1 East 2nd St., Coudersport PA 16915.

Please cite: Heineman, Brandy. “Motivation Monday: Second Passes on Old Searches.” Bookishness and other Beauties [online]. Published January 12, 2015. Accessed (date). Source: Potter County Courthouse, Record of Deaths, Book #1 (1893-1905). 1 East 2nd St., Coudersport PA 16915.

Question for You: Make any brilliant discoveries on a second pass lately?