Kansas, Is There A Problem?

Alice and Kathryn, I'm on the trail. Too bad I can't just fly to Pratt right now.

This all started with a list of birth/death days for my deceased grandparents, aunts, and uncles, kind of an "honor our ancestors on their special days" project, which became a topic of interest for my oldest son and me as we noticed that family members' deaths sometimes happen around the same time. Siblings, parents and children, or sometimes a grandparent, parent, and child, will die years apart, but in the same month, same week, or one day apart. It's weird.

To make my list, I worked my way up the family tree and eventually, my Smiths in Kentucky entered the picture. I found that I had no death date for auntie Alice Smith Anderson - just a death year (unacceptable!). Having conducted some half-assed research in the past, I still had no clue what happened to her daughter, 1C3R Catherine/Katherine/Kathryn Anderson Thomas. I did find them tonight in the same cemetery in Pratt, Kansas, along with a death year for Kathryn, which is more than I previously knew.

Kansas seems to be quite tight-lipped about who did what in their state, so on Monday I will call the cemetery to see if they can tell me anything about these ladies. If I have any luck, I'll be able to order Alice and Kathryn's death certificates from VitalChek, maybe, since I'm just a lowly niece and possibly unworthy. Hopefully, since Kathryn died almost a hundred years ago and Alice about fifteen years later, Kansas will take pity on me and cough up their death records.

Why is Kansas being so weird about their dead? Hmmm.

Happily, I will add that this is the kind of project that puts me in INTENSE RESEARCH mode. I'm still learning to add more details in my information for Future Me to see, such as adding the names of cemeteries to my loved ones' burial info - like, why would I not do that in the first place? - or add the entire date to census records (looking on the record for the day and month, not just the year). This is just another project that creates these deep research opportunities, along with the chance to do some of this detailing. I love that my brain works like this.