BY MEGAN SMOLENYAK SMOLENYAK
I . I work on an orphan heirloom case in an attempt to locate the descendants of the original owner of a family treasure only to discover that there are no descendants. e line has died out— and possibly even the branches most closely associated with it. What then?
at’s what happened when I heard from Susan Roose of Virginia, although I didn’t know it when I received her tempting submission:
Basics: It’s a travel journal—from Paris to Rome in 1911/12—with a description and history of each city and museum they passed through. It contains a passport with his physical description dated 15 July 1911.
at’s exactly what I did with William Bradley Waller. Up popped a single hit, obviously a fraction of the content the site actually holds on him. But that one hit was a useful starting point.
It was an entry in the Presbyterian Ministerial Directory for 1898. From it, I learned that he was born in Berwick, Pennsylvania, on 24 June 1848 and resided in New Rochelle, New York, in 1898. Had I typed in just William Waller, I would have been inundated with thousands of possibilities, but now I was o to a running start.
Names given: William Bradley Waller. e passport says he traveled with his wife, but there is no other name on the passport or that I can nd in the journal.
Since this request stemmed from a travel journal that had been kept circa 1911– 12, I decided to take a look at the William Waller listings in the Immigration Collection at Ancestry.com, limiting myself to 1912, plus or minus two years. ere I found William Bradley Waller arriving
Additional information: I found this
book among the many hundreds of
books le by my mother. My parents
traveled a great deal and I’m sure that
shewasintriguedbythisjournal. is
book was one of many that
she bought at book sales and
secondhand bookstores. It
cost $. 30. I would like to
get it back to someone
in the family because of
the passport.
A travel journal from
almost a century ago? What
family member wouldn”t be delight-
ed to receive this out of the blue? I
was on the case.
What’s Your Full Name? Normally when I begin a search, I enter just the rst and last name, but over time I’ve come to learn that it’s o en worth trying a person’s full name when using Ancestry.com.
References:
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