Calling Into The Past

As you already know, I found out my grandfather is buried in New Orleans, LA and, if you have read the comments on my post about finding him, you know I sent away for his death certificate. It came last week and it provided me with three new pieces of information. First, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage, second, he had lived in New Orleans for twelve years before he died, and, third, he was married to someone other than my grandmother when he died.

All of these things were a surprise to me. The first because I was expecting to find out he had killed himself or had an accident while drunk but instead he just dropped dead of a stroke at 8:10 PM one night in 1956. The second because he just disappeared after 1942 and the last address I had for him showed him living in Peoria, IL with his mother. Now I find out he moved to New Orleans sometime in 1945. I went from 14 missing years to only 2 in the blink of an eye. The last bit of information is the most fascinating to me. I found a marriage record for my grandfather listed in the Vital Records of Louisiana so I know he was married to what was either his second or third wife, but it begs the question, had he divorced my grandmother before he remarried or was it a case of like son, like father? Now that I know he had married again I've sent away for that record to see if I can find more information about my new step-grandmama.

As you can surely tell, I find this whole genealogy thing quite captivating. I'm finding the answers to questions I never thought to ask before and in some ways it's like putting a jigsaw puzzle together knowing that some of the piece are missing and will never be found. This is find with me since before all I had was a box full of what I thought were mismatched pieces that would never fit together. How can partially complete picture not be better than that?