Cleaning Up The Letter B

I've started a project cleaning up my database. Whenever I finish a letter of the alphabet, I'll write a blog post to report about what I learned about the surnames that start with that letter.

I have 7 main family lines filed under the letter B, plus a ton of my relatives married people with B surnames. The letter B took a while to get through, but it did not disappoint.

Here are just a few of the gems I found in the Bs:

• Found the obituary of Catherine Bank, wife of John Weis in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania newspapers. I was also able to track them down in the census and city directories after I found their address in the obituary. Thanks to Leslie Lawson for the obit lookup.
• Realized that a family history had spelled a woman's first name incorrectly. It's Ursula Barrows, now Visula. Then I was able to find her marriage to James Madison Washburn and track the family through the census.
• Found marriage records for Margaret Bascom's daughter, Katherine Elizabeth Smith, which led me to finding Margaret in the 1900, 1910, and 1920 censuses, Indianapolis directories and a second husband. Still need to find the second marriage though.
• Finally put together everything I had gathered on Fanny Bascom and was able to follow her children around St. Louis, Missouri after her death in the 1840s.
• Found the marriage of Philo Dibble Bates and Ann Magdalene Whitmore in Ontario. Then I found Ann's death in British Columbia.
• Tracked the John Bower and Maria Katharina Schilling family in census records and found John in the same cemetery as his wife. Imagine that!

These are just the highlights from the B surnames in my tree. Only 24 more letters to go!

Other letter cleanups:
Unknown surnames
Letter A