Saturday, January 13, 2007

Little puzzle pieces

Today's findings consist of a single obituary that was uncovered by Owens & Brumley - which is the funeral home that handled Minnie's funeral. The text of this obituary is as follows:

Mrs. Minnie Sommerfelt
Funeral services for Mrs. Minnie Sommerfelt, 75, a resident of Wichita Falls 10 years who died at her home, 1310 Thirty-fifth, Monday, are scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Saturday from the Evangelical United Brethren Church.
Pallbearers will be Veston Lindsey, Charles Davis, J.H. Baucom, W.H. Dickey, Aubrey Bennett, Haskell Mayo and Lawrence Schrader. Interment will be under the direction of Owens & Brumley Funeral Home.
Mrs. Sommerfelt is survived by three sons, four daughters, 22 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

This little gem brings a few questions to my mind. These are questions that I need to figure out how to answer. I am curious now, whether or not Minnie was a member of the congregation for the Evangelical United Brethren Church. If she was, perhaps they have some membership records or things that I might be able to retrieve some information from.
In reading sequentially, the next question becomes... who are these people that were her pallbearers? There is not a single name that looks familiar. So, perhaps this is another avenue to take, trying to discover who these men are and see if perhaps I can find any information out that way.
The last question that sprung to my mind was this item about three sons and four daughters. I believe I have figured out who the daughters are: Matilda, Othelia, Emma, and Christina. The sons are a little bit more confusing for me, as I have 4 sons that survived infancy and so should have been alive: Nathaniel, Rudolph, Heinrich (Henry), and Arthur (Art). The one that I think that had died is Nathaniel, since I have death dates for all of the rest of the brothers - and the dates are all after Minnie died. Thus, this is a conclusion that I now have to substantiate. The last known location of Nathaniel was in North Dakota and that is where my research will pick up tomorrow. Well, that and trying to answer the other two questions as well.

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