I discovered a court case that was appealed to the Illinois State Supreme Court while searching on Google books. I have included part of the summary here in this post. The parents died within ten days of each other in 1920. I am not certain what they died from, but will have to add getting death certificates to my list of things to do. The mother is a first cousin of my great-grandfather Trautvetter.
They weren’t the only ones in this family to die at a young age with young children. My great-grandfather Trautvetter’s own sister and her husband died during the 1918 flu epidemic and their children were raised by family members after the parents died.
Have you considered if the 1918 flu or other epidemics impacted your family members? Leaving minor children with no parents created a problem and in some cases those problems might have resulted in court or other records.
Another great-grandfather had a sister and brother-in-law who died during the flu. Now I’ll have to get on that and research that family as well.
The image in this post was from:
Reports of Cases at Law and in Chancery Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Illinois
By the Illinois Supreme Court
Published by Supreme Court, State of Illinois, 1921
Item notes: v. 297
Original from Harvard University
Digitized Aug 15, 2007
located on http://books.google.com/
Ruth says:
Like everything else in genealogy don’t assume that since a relative died during the flu epidemic, that person died of the flu. Verify. A great grandfather in our family died then; he was only 22, until we could find the death certificate, listing cause of death, the assumption was The Flu. He died from kidney failure, not caused by the flu. He too left a minor child.
mjnrootdig says:
True. I don’t know what the couple whose child was referenced in the court case died of. It’s never good to assume.