I opened my family history files on https://new.familysearch.org wondering who to look for. I always go to Dad’s family, usually the Ross line. I went down a line that I have been working on for years. The Silvius line. It was Martha M Silvius’ brothers and sisters that I found last year. Her youngest sister, Minnie J Silvius was married to Edwin S Kemmerer. I decided to try to find his parents.
Looking at the records it appeared that Minnie had died a month after delivering three baby girls Minnie, Marcia and Myrtle, all of which died within the next year. Minnie had an older son that was 10 years old at his mother’s death.
I began searching on https://familysearch.org/ looking through census records for the Kemmerer name. There are millions of new names on this site because of all the indexing going on. I found the 1900 Census first that listed Edwin and Minnie with their son Ralph born 1898, 2 years old at that time.
I needed to go earlier to find Edwin’s parents. I found him on the 1880 Census with several siblings, 13 years old and his parents were listed as Samuel and Sophia. That was very exciting, but I wanted to confirm that it was really him. I saw that his sister Emma Werkheiser was living with them with a baby Edgar 10m. Emma was listed as Widowed. I searched for another hour trying to find something more, putting in different names. I finally tried looking for Emma Werkheiser and up popped the 1910 census that listed a Emana E Werkisin living with a Ralph Renner whose parents were Ed Renner and Ida M. It said that Ed had been married twice and Ida just once.
Not at all what I thought I was looking for, but as I looked at the actual image of the census I could see that it said Kemmerer as the last name and the head of the household was not Ed, but E S. I have been doing indexing and arbitrating for years and it was clear to me. I can’t fault the arbitrator too much, it was hard to discern. I knew what I was looking for and I think Edwin wanted me to find it. It seemed miraculous to me.
I searched the new.familysearch records to see if anyone had entered the family either under Kemmerer or Renner and found nothing. I put in the family last night and printed the temple sheet to take it with us to Seattle.
This is the family as I believe it to be.
Samuel Kemmerer
Sophia
1 Emma Kemmerer Werkheiser (husband unknown)
Edgar Werkheiser
2 Alice Kemmerer
3 Malinda (twin)
4 William (twin)
5 Edwin Samuel
Wife 1-Minnie J Silvius 1864-1903
Ralph
Minnie
Myrtle
Marcia
Wife 2 -Ida M
Harold S
Robert A
William
6 Charles
