Week 4 – Overlooked

My father-in-law always tells me, the ancestors don’t matter; tell me where all the descendants are. He’s more of a forward thinker than a backward thinker. So, I was on the hunt to track down the descendants of Philip Batey. This, at first, seemed a daunting concept. I mean how many descendants are possible for a couple who had five children in the early 1800s?

For Philip Batey and Mary Duggans, it turns out, not that many.

In Descendants of Philip Batey, I reported that I lost track of Philip’s granddaughter, Mary Canner, daughter of Lillian (Lilly) F. Batey. The last records I could find for her were of her adoption by Squire and Nannie Batey and her residence in the home of Squire and Nanny after their deaths as Mary Batey in 1926.

I overlooked a key clue to tracking her beyond 1926; her address at 1512 Vance Avenue in New Albany, Indiana.

You see, the address is what remained the same for both Squire’s niece and grand-niece who were adopted by him and his wife, Nannie. The niece was Nettie Blust, the daughter of Philip and Squire’s sister, Jennie (Minerva Jane). Nettie married a man named Hubbard and they had a daughter, Ethyl Hubbard who married a man named Fish. The Hubbard and Fish families also continuously lived at 1512 Vance Avenue and I had tracked them through all the census and city directories until their deaths.

Secondly, I overlooked a resource.

I never really pulled the string on Mary’s father because, frankly, he was hard to track and I wasn’t really interested in tracking him anyway. But last week, I peeked to see if there was a one-world FamilySearch tree for Mary’s father Fonney Canner. It turns out that Canner was not the correct spelling of his surname, it was Koerner. Not only did FamilySearch contributors record evidence of the spelling of Canner to Koerner, but they also found Mary Koerner’s Social Security Death Index entry which named her father and mother. But nothing else, no census, no city directories, no marriage records, no burial records. Not even her death certificate, just that lone Social Security Death Index confirming her death date, at least two married names, and the names of her parents.

As a result of finding these two overlooked research methods, I learned that the only thing that changed over the years was Mary’s name. This allowed her to hide in plain sight.

Now that I knew her married name, I consulted her father’s obituary which named her and confirmed she stayed in New Albany at least until 1956. But where had she been all the years before and after his death? With her updated surname, death date, presumed death location, and two additional surnames (Wilkins and Keeton) I had some new leads to pursue.

After some searching, I finally found her death certificate under Mary J. Wilkins in New Albany. Her death certificate recorded her father as “not known” and mother as “Lilly not known”. So who was the informant with so little information? Edith Fish. Edith Hubbard Fish. The daughter of Squire and Phillip’s niece, Nettie Blust who was raised with Mary. And what was Mary’s last residence when she died? 1514 Vance Avenue, next door to 1512 where she grew up in Squire and Nannie Batey’s household. Her 1st cousin twice removed, Edith Fish, was the informant. So who lived at the old Squire Batey residence at 1512 Vance Avenue when Mary died? Edith Fish.

I went back to the records for Nettie Blust Hubbard to check something…In every census year between 1920 and 1950 except 1940, Mary lived either next door at 1514 Vance Avenue or at 1512 Vance Avenue with Nettie Blust Hubbard under her married names. I never found her as Mary Keeton, but I did uncover a third surname and opined that Keeton could be another misspelling of Koerner. Yet, not all of her mysteries have been solved. I am still in the process of validating whether she had children who had grown to adulthood. Something tells me, “no” because it was her distant cousin who reported her death, not a child or grandchild.

Genealogical Summary

Mary Jane Koerner was born to Lillian Batey and Fonney Cleo Koerner in New Albany, Floyd County, Indiana on 9 January 1907. Lilly and Fonney separated near the time of Mary’s birth and eventually divorced. Mary stayed with her mother while Fonney moved on to remarry and have a new family with his second wife.

After Lilly was admitted to the local asylum for an illness, Mary was adopted by her great-uncle, Squire Batey, and his wife Nanny (Annie) Merity, and they raised Mary at 1512 Vance Avenue in New Albany. After Squire and Nannie died, Mary and her 1st-cousin once removed (Nettie Blust) remained in the Batey home of their childhood.

Mary’s half-siblings through Fonney’s second marriage appear to have kept up with her as they remembered her in Fonney’s obituary in 1956.

Mary married 1) John Eberle about 1927, probably in New Albany. Mary and John remained at 1512 Vance Avenue until 1931 when they rented the home next door, 1514 Vance Avenue, where they remained until Mary married 2) William B. Wilkins sometime after 1940. Mary and William remained at 1514 Vance Avenue for the rest of Mary’s life. William died on 4 March 1971.

Mary is not known to have had children with either of her husbands.

Mary died on 24 March 1990 in a nursing home in New Albany, Floyd County, Indiana.