Charles and Alwilda Adams

At a recent Family Discovery Day, some wise people explained how you can use puzzilla.org, linked to familysearch.org, or figure out where missing family lines and cousins might be. Last night I tried looking in my Grandma Johnson's line, through her Dad's maternal grandfather, Albert Daniel Mahany (1844-1907). Around my third or fourth try, I found a person with additional family listed on findagrave.com.

John Edgar O'Neil and Auretta Empey are my Grandma Johnson's parents.

Descendancy chart for Albert Daniel Mahany on Puzzilla

Edgar Ellsworth Adams and Anna Sarah Mahany were missing (on familysearch.org) two people Find A Grave guessed were their children. As of yesterday, only Virginia, Luella, and Gordon were listed as children of Edgar and Anna Adams, which left Charles and Alwilda unconnected to the family line on familysearch.

FindaGrave.com

At the time of the 1920 Green River, Emery, Utah US Census, the family is all together with both parents and five children. Edgar is a merchant in a grocery. This showed that they are related.

1920 US Census; E. E., Anna S, Virginia, Luella, Charles, Gordon, and Alwilda Adams

In the 1940 Census, Charles Edgar is listed as Anna's son, with a wife and two children all living together in Grand Junction, Colorado. He worked as a brakeman and conductor on steam railroad engines for The Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad throughout much of his career. Charles and wife, Mattie, stayed in Grand Junction most of their lives.

1940 US Census; Anna, Virginia, Charles E, Mattie R, Maryln, and Charles Adams Jr

Charles and Mattie in the 

Grand Junction City Directory; 1943

Slightly more complete and connected Edgar and Anna Sarah Adams family line

Going back to findagrave, I started researching Alwilda Marine Adams Smith. Some other fun discoveries yielded by ancestry are Grand Junction High School yearbook images. Alwilda sang with the Glee Club in 1928 and 1929.

Grand Junction High School Glee Club 1928

Grand Junction High School Glee Club 1929

Their family of seven started to grow with marriages and children, and they started to scatter. Their father, Edgar, passed away in 1925, and Anna Luella shortly after in 1926 at the age of 23. Alwilda was 14 or 15. As of the 1930 census, Mother Anna Sarah, Virginia, Gordon, and Alwilda live together in Grand Junction, Gordon working for the steam railroads as a Time Keeper.

Yearbook from Colorado State Teacher's College in 1933

Alwilda attended Colorado State Teacher's College in 1933. Her husband, Frank Corwin Smith, Jr served in World War II, and they are buried in Denver. He and his parents are on familysearch, so I was able to add Alwilda as his wife and connect their family again. 

There's something wonderfully spectacular about finding an ancestor in something as ordinary as a city directory or yearbook. I get caught up in finding the details of their lives in these documents, and though they are but first cousins three-times removed, I got to know them a little bit.