Trip to Anderson, Indiana

Last Wednesday, I headed over to Anderson Indiana to try and tie up a few loose ends. A couple of things that I did not know where:

• Herman's wife's (Charlotte) birthdate and parents names. Also needed to know their marriage date.
• Stella (Puckett) Wallace's date of death. (Herman's sister)
• Theodore Wallace's date of death.

I headed over to the Health Department first. Unfortunately, they didn't let me look at the original documents. They found death certificates for Herman, Charlotte, and Theodore. One wasn't there for Stella.

Nothing was new on Herman's Death Certificate. Charlotte's gave me her date of birth and her fathers last name: Bridgeman. Theodore's gave me a few details as well. Gave me his birth date as 12-15-1946. It also listed his parents as Samuel Wallace and Eliza Douglas. But the interesting thing was his last name was listed as McWallace instead of just Wallace.

After getting the documents, I headed down the street to the library. I found Herman and Charlotte on a number of phone directories. The first one I found them on was the 1927 city directory. I have concluded that they were married between 1924 and 1927. But according to the marriage records, they did not get married in Madison County.

I did manage to retrieve Theodore's obituary from 1946. This gave me another nugget of information that I did not have before. Before going there, I knew of only one child, Gilbert. But on Theodore's obit, it also listed: Rosa, Samuel, Ernest and Otho in addition to Gilbert. I then tried to find some obituaries of his children. I found Samuel's obit in the Anderson newspaper (12/22/1970). In this obit, it states that he was the son of Theodore and Elizabeth Wallace. It also states that he was born in Frisco, IN.

As a side note, Anderson's Public Library is wonderful. They have a lot of resources. Compare this to libraries in Hamilton County which are flat out horrible. (At least the Noblesville, Carmel, and Westfield libraries).