Ida M. Jones was my great grandmother, and despite the close relationship,
she is also one of my "brick walls" for nearly 13 years now. She lived the
first half of her life in Indianapolis, and I have confirmed her marriage in
Marion County. She may even have been born there, but the only location I
can find on that is "Indiana" in the census. I only last weekend found out
her maiden name, but still have no information on her siblings or parents,
so cannot take her line any further. Here is what I do have, but much of it
is family information passed down from family elders with, unfortunately,
failing memories, so some of it is unconfirmed and possibly even incorrect:
b. Jan(?) 1867(?) in Indiana
m. (James) Ernest Oliver in Marion Co., Indiana 20 Apr 1889
children - Flossie, Roy (my grandfather), Harry, Muriel, Frank
The family appears in the census in Indianapolis in 1900, 1910, 1920, and
1930. "Grandma Oliver" outlived some of her children, and in her failing
years she moved to Florida to be near her daughter Flossie. She died there,
I believe in Broward County, in 1966 or 1967, reportedly a couple of months
short of her 100th birthday. I do not know where she was buried. My guess
would be Indianapolis, but that is a pure guess. It could be Florida, since
she was in a nursing home in Coral Gables, but I simply do not know.
I know nothing of her parents or siblings, and only now am learning her
maiden name via the Marion County, IN marriage records, where I was able to
confirm their marriage date. I have located an Ida M. Jones, 13 years of
age, in the 1880 census living with an aunt and uncle, so it is possible her
parents had died, but I do not know if this is the same person or not. I
realize I am not giving you much to go on, but I have been piecing
information together for 13 years, one fragment at a time, and this is
virtually the total sum of what I know about my great grandmother. . . . .
whom I used to correspond with as a kid.
Her son Roy was my grandfather, but was killed in an unsolved hit-and-run
auto accident in 1925, leaving my grandmother a 22 year old widow with two
daughters (one of them my mother) under two years of age. When they moved to
California to find a new life and remarried there in 1930 during the
depression, we pretty much lost contact with our Oliver/Jones lines. I am
posting this here in desperation, hoping someone out there can make any
sense of it and, hopefully, add any fragment of information to help me get
past this "brick wall" in my genealogy.
If anyone out there has ANYTHING to add to this puzzle, I would be eternally
grateful. NO scrap of information is too minor.
David E. Cann
decann(a)infionline.net