Boston or Philadelphia: Is There a Difference?

The greater the distance, the easier it is to get places mixed up.

The 1913 obituary of Agnes Harper indicated she was

survived by her two sisters in Boston, Massachusetts. The names of the sisters were known from other sources and, like any reasonable genealogist, I began trying to search for them in Boston. After all, that is where the obituary said they would be located. Several searches were conducted in censuses and city directories, all to no avail.

Before I spent any more time and went to the work of creating charts to organize my search and allow me to strategize, I decided to search out other records on the family.

And sure enough there was a signed statement in the probate file communicating to the judge the addresses to which notices were sent to Agnes Harper’s heirs in 1915. The first two heirs were Agnes’ sisters, Mary and Sarah. Their address was listed as Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

They weren’t in Boston at all. Obituaries in newspapers don’t always get things correct. Probate files (while they can contain errors) tend to be more reliable.

There’s several reminders here:

• Sometimes before you spend a lot of time searching records in another location, focus on things you can find–they may help direct that other search on which you are stuck.
• Some records, for a variety of reasons, are more accurate than others–although any record can be incorrect.
• And sometimes, when a location is thousands of miles away and no one really knows the people anyway, concern for accuracy in regards to some details is minimal.

Mary and Sarah Brice were located in records in Philadelphia. How long they lived there is another question at this point.