When I received all the family papers from my Grandpa Reed, they included records from Grandma Reed's side of the family, too. Evidently both of them had been collecting family stories and writing them down, drawing family trees, and collecting letters from relatives. One of the items in the inventory of Grandma's papers was a luggage tag.
It says "Mrs. J.H. Wooley, Flagstaff, Arizona
formerly Lottie Prosser, daughter of
Charles Prosser, Mama's brother."
formerly Lottie Prosser, daughter of
Charles Prosser, Mama's brother."
Over the years, I did enough research to learn that Lottie Prosser (Grandma Reed's cousin) was listed on the 1900 census of Forester, Sanilac County, Michigan (living with her maternal grandmother), and on the 1910 census of Wheatland, Sanilac County, with her husband John H. Wooley and two small sons, William and John Jr. I couldn't find her after that, not even in Arizona records, and I didn't know what became of her.
Then I found out about Online Searchable Death Indexes (http://www.deathindexes.com), which is a continually updated roster of online vital records for every state. When I learned about Arizona's online death certificates, I went to the website (http://genealogy.az.gov/) and typed in Lottie Wooley. Immediately I had her death certificate on my computer screen! This told me the reason she was living in Arizona - because she had consumption (or tuberculosis). She died 10 November 1919, at the age of 33.
Some time later, I followed the breadcrumbs on Ancestry to trace Lottie's two sons, and actually called her grandson Arthur Wooley to talk to him about his grandmother. He sent me her picture, which I'm guessing was taken between 1910 and 1915.
The moral of this story is, you never know where the smallest clues are going to take you, so hang onto all of them!
The moral of this story is, you never know where the smallest clues are going to take you, so hang onto all of them!
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