I caved.....and another little nugget found.

Yeah yeah yeah......I said I was done for awhile and taking a break and I was truthful about that.  I was struggling though because as I was going through my files and moving things around, I was having to refer to my tree and I kept seeing those danged little shaky leafs!  I got an email about new subscribers getting 50% off a subscription and using a friend's suggestion I called and they honored the discount for me too.  That means I'm good for 6 more months but it doesn't mean I'm going to back to what I had been doing.  I am rather enjoying where I'm at with my searches.  I've gotten all of my digital photos organized and have cleaned up my entire genealogy folder.  I got rid of iCloud because it wasn't working like it was supposed to (although ironically after I deleted some stuff from it the 30 missing gigs of information suddenly appeared - too late Apple).  I am using Google Drive and it is AMAZING!  $2.99/month for 200 gigs and the file structure is just like windows.  It's stupid easy to drag and drop files where I want them.......I love it.  I'm typing this on a laptop I know is actively dying but I'm doing so with the knowledge that all of my files are safely backed up on a thumb drive in my safe and in the cloud, unlike my last hard drive failure.

So what nugget did I find?  I've written a lot about my Comstock ancestry and wrote an entire blog post about my 3rd great-grandmother Barbara Harris Comstock.  In there I referenced that I'd found that she married George Tibbett 28 Feb 1882, almost 8 years after the death of her husband David Barkley Comstock.

Bottom lines (record #170)

I wrote in that previous blog that I could find no record of them together after the marriage, which struck me as odd given that I know where she was between then and her death.  I was poking around at genealogybank.com a few nights ago and there it was, in the Grand Rapids Evening Leader 28 Feb 1884 (exactly 2 years after they married) they divorced.

Thankfully the article is incorrect in stating that she resumed her maiden name of Comstock, since her maiden name was actually Harris.  I wouldn't have found this if they hadn't messed up.

Interestingly, I also found mention of a lawsuit that Barbara was involved in.  There were quite a few mentions of legal filings and then this really lengthy article about her winning her lawsuit in the Grand Rapids Evening Leader 07 Apr 1881.  You will have to zoom in on this to read it but I tried it with my laptop and it does work.

What was particularly interesting to me about this article is that a cousin in California sent me a bunch of photos and in them was this picture of houses that David Barkley Comstock allegedly built.  The article lists clues to a possible location.  All in all, I'm glad I went back through and scoured those papers more.

Barbara King Harris Comstock - a mystery solved

As I've already written several times - I have accumulated a large number of pictures and documents simply by being persistent and reaching out where others normally wouldn't.  The pictures of Barbara's husband David Barkley Comstock that I posted in my last post came from the great grandchildren of two brothers of my 2nd great grandfather.  When I introduce myself to those people it takes a moment to explain how we're related!

Barbara was born May 15th, 1829 at Edinburg, Saratoga County NY, the 11th of 11 children of John Harris and Esther White.  The problem I had was that until last week I only knew about 4 of her brothers and her, and the gap between her and her preceding brother was 10 years leading me to believe she was possibly not their daughter.  I had seen dozens of online family trees listing Barbara as their daughter but had no proof.  I tried tracking down her death certificate to no avail and was really frustrated with this.  Then my Cali connection came through for me again, this time in a big way.  She found in her aunt's belongings the following 2 pages of family notes:

 These papers not only gave me birth, marriage and death dates for Barbara's parents but gave me 7 siblings I wasn't aware of (6 if you count that I had a picture of Royal sent with the other Comstock photos but no way of knowing who he was).  Additionally the second paper helped explain why she had "King" in her name - it was her father's mother's maiden name!  I about fell out of bed (yes, I opened them on my phone in bed when I woke up - always have to check my email for this kind of stuff before I get up) when I read these pages.  I'm told more good stuff is forthcoming and I can't wait to see it!  I'm told letters between the Comstock families in Grand Rapids MI and Sacramento CA exist so I'm hoping to see the handwriting of my 2nd (and do I dare hope 3rd) great grandparents? 

Here is Royal Harris, officially my 3rd great grand-uncle.  I've already tracked down a direct descendant of his and am hoping to find a death record for him soon.  I find him up until 1880.


I know very little about Barbara's life other than marriage to D.B. Comstock and subsequent family.  After losing David she moved to California but apparently found love again with the Canadian George Tibbett who she married February 28th, 1882 at Grand Rapids MI.  Unfortunately other than that record he's a phantom so I don't know what happened to that. 

 On the left is another photo taken from my grandmother's cedar chest.  It saddens me that my grandmother didn't take the time to show me these things.  Perhaps she had forgotten they were there.  I know she never knew her personally but when my grandma died and I found all of this it makes me wonder how much more about their lives I could have known.

These 3 photos on the right are from the California connection.


 

Barbara died of "exhaustion" January 28th, 1894 at Palermo, Butte County CA. I stumbled on her obituary using genealogybank - was very surprised and thrilled to find it.  I had a findagrave.com volunteer confirm her burial in Old Oroville Cemetery - he had to completely uncover the marker as it was buried in grass. 

Grand Rapids Press February 10, 1894