A 1983 copy of Ida's death certificate gives more clues about her life. Her husband, Isaac provided her personal information.
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| Mrs. Ida E. Rickell, Certificate of Death |
He reported that she was born in Indiana, the 20th of Sept., 1865, that her mother's maiden name was M. Jones and her father was J. Andrews. Interesting. Did Isaac not know their full given names? Could he have been guessing about the initials?
Isaac gave Ida this photo album for her birthday before they were married. The album contains several photographs of the Jones family which helped me begin to piece the family together.
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"Uncle Frank Jones, My Mothers Uncle" and "Aunt Mary Jones, My Mothers Aunt"
The handwriting is that of Ida's daughter, Bertha |
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"These two are Brother and Sister"
"Uncle Sherman Jones" and "Grandma R's aunt"
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"Charlie Jones, My Mother's Cousin"
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"Edith Jones, My Mother's Cousin, was holding her Daddys watch." |
And loose in the back of the album I found this memorial card.
Hmmm. Who is D. J. Lehr? A name I hadn't heard before. Or had I? I kept looking. He must be an important person to Ida and Isaac. And, then I noticed this.
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Witnesses to Isaac and Ida's Marriage
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On 2 Aug 1884, B.F. Jones, a merchant in Central City, Nebr. signed a "Homestead Proof - Testimony of Witness" for the homestead application of David J. Lehr. Lehr was applying for an additional homestead of 80 acres, adjacent to his original 80 acre homestead where he had lived for 11 years. The digitized document can be viewed
here at Ancestry.com with a paid subscription.
And, among the treasure trove of items Ida and Bertha left behind is this 1903 letter Isaac wrote to his "wife and daughter" in care of R. S. Jones, Central City, Nebraska.
Apparently Ida and Bertha were visiting in Central City and would "start" for home in a few days. Isaac mentions "Grandma" and "Sherm".
In 1900, Sherman Jones, a single man born in Aug 1852, was working as a carpenter and living in Central City, Merrick Co., Nebraska. His widowed mother, Annis Jones, born in New York in Feb. 1821, was living with him. Annis was the mother of six children and only two were still living. You can view this census record at Family Search
here. It seems the R.S. Jones on the above letter must have been R. Sherman Jones and the Grandma in the letter was likely Annis Jones, Ida's grandmother!
It took me another three years, but in 2015, I found an index of early Merrick County obituaries on a genealogy website. It included a 1906 obituary for an Annis Jones. I was hopeful the obituary would list Ida as Annis' granddaughter. A library assistant at the Central City Public Library was able to locate the obituary.
No mention of Ida. As often is the case with a new discovery, it answers a few questions and raises a few others. It clears up the names of her sons, Benjamin Franklin Jones and Roger Sherman Jones. It seems they commonly used their initials or middle names rather than their first names. Their father was Elias D. Jones. The obituary states Annis had seven children. (The 1900 census showed six.) Elias had died about eighteen years earlier. Annis other children were not named. If Annis was Ida's grandmother, one of the unnamed daughters was Ida's mother.
What next?
