Parents of Charles William Jones (1864-1949 - born in napa,calif)?

[Lisa in California]

Zak:

I noticed the document has an old paperclip mark on it.  Is there any chance that the papers under this sheet might contain additional information?  The smallest bit of information could be a huge clue.

If your aunt is willing (and able) to spend some time looking for additional material where she found this document, there may be more clues to his background.  Also, are there any other family members that might have old papers, letters or photos?  I started researching my family when I was in college (have continued on and off since that time) and it was only about 5 years ago that my aunt sent copies of old photographs of an ancestor -- her cousin had them!

Are there any old photos of Charles, his father, and the second family?  Are there any old photos from this side of the family that could be of his father and second family? Not often, but sometimes there are little clues in the photos.

"I may have seen him briefly once or twice as a kid, but the chances were remote since he too had difficulty with the restrictions of matrimony and found it convenient to spend most of his time in Hawaii as a dredging contractor.  But old CW was a writer--and a published writer at that.  He had been working on his dredger in San Francisco Bay when the earthquake of 1906..."

Perhaps you could try searching for his writings, if they were published?  There could possibly be some insight into his life, depending upon his topics? 

[Lisa in California]

Death of Margaret Moran, wife of the late Richard Jones
http://www.rootschat.com/links/0yr3/
In the 13 September 1901 newspaper

Mrs. Jones was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery.  I don't see a burial for Richard Jones.
Section L  Row 14  Grave 119
http://www.sfgenealogy.com/php/cemetery/cemeterysearch.php
Once you are on the above site, if you do a search with the above information (L, 14, 119 - don't use any names), it will show Mrs. Jones and two others - possibly her son-in-law and ?

Map of the cemetery:
http://holycross.t324.com/images/maps/HolyCrossCemeteryMap.jpg
If this turns out to be the correct "family", I can pinpoint where she is buried within the cemetery.
The grave is most likely near the bottom of L, somewhat close to L2.
Again, if this turns out to be Charles' stepmother and if your aunt would like to see the grave, the staff at Holy Names is very nice and very helpful and they can direct her.

[jazdrv]

Lisa,

I was afraid I lost you. I'm really glad you haven't given up on me! Thank you.

I put your questions to my aunt yesterday and for the record, I'm also truly eager to know if she can find more. I'm living in Scotland currently and she's in San Francisco so I'm geo-challenged to her trove (whatever it may be) myself. My guess is that she's probably exhausted the possibilities. But, we'll see what she says.

I do believe she has some pictures of him though. And she was going to get those to me. So I'm waiting on that anxiously!

My instinct tells me that it's not the Moran's. But the fact that Richard was a sailor -- that's very very interesting. I need to take a hard look at that scenario.

Thank you Lisa. Really, I very much appreciate your help.

Let's see what my aunt says. Perhaps she's got a clue or 2 more. I've got my fingers crossed.

Zak

[jazdrv]

Just had a thought. Assuming CWJ's parents got married the same year he was born (assuming 1864), that might be an interesting search -- the marriage that is. I did a search on that critiera and only got 12 results. Seems low, but anyway...

There is a Richard in the results which is interesting. But it would be an odd one considering this Richard and his wife got married in Yuba...

[Lisa in California]

Hi Zak:

There are several things to try/do now.

Has your aunt tried to order Charles' death certificate?  The information on it should be somewhat accurate, but if Charles' relation didn't know the answers to some of the questions, there may be "unknown" as replies.  This is a site where I would suggest ordering the certificate:
https://www.acgov.org/auditor/clerk/death1.htm
There may be less expensive ways (sites) to order certificates, but I start with government sites as I'm not a trusting person.    Please read everything thoroughly, as I've never ordered a California certificate and I don't know the process.

I don't remember if Charles' marriage has been mentioned. Would a marriage document have witnesses' names?  Perhaps a relation from Charles' side could have been a witness?  When ordering a copy of a Canadian marriage document from a church for one of my ancestors (husband and wife, so two ancestors)  included on the document were about six witnesses - all family members.

If Charles was born in May 1864, you may want to expand the California search to include 1863 and possibly before.  For decades I believed my great-grandmother to be an only child.  A few years ago, we found out she had at least three sisters.  A few months ago a very kind RootsChatter found a possible sister of my great-grandmother and it now looks like she had at least 8-10 siblings (some died when they were young).  I would not be surprised to find out Charles had siblings.

If you aunt has any stories or knowledge of Charles, the tiniest bits of information may be clues.

As a last resort, you could try following up on the marriages from the early 1860's to find the families on census returns.  I don't know if all California counties were included in the marriage records, though.  Also, if his parents were born in England, there is always a chance that they were married in England, or on the East Coast of the U.S.

I look forward to hearing if your aunt has any photos or knowledge of his life (no matter how insignificant it may seem).

[jazdrv]

Lisa,

Sorry I've been quiet. Again, I wanted to thank you for following up.

At the moment, we're looking into ordering the death cert for him and see where that takes us. We're also trying to see if someone at Napa knows anything about a birth cert. My aunt's on the case in both regards since she's over there in the bay area and a little closer to the action. Same for the marriage documents, if anything is different from what we already have...

We haven't been able to find anymore writing by him.

I did a big analysis on his two sons (and his grandchildren) in an attempt to understand the pattern of the family -- and to see if it might reveal some further clues. It was insightful certainly to do that (in terms of why things happened the way did more into contemporary times) -- but it didn't shed anything new as to CWJ's origins.

Your last post, I think is spot on. We need to see if we can find those vital records. And, we're going after them now. When I have more, I'll be back on rootschat and looking for you!

Zak

[jazdrv]

We believe we've found Charles William Jones parents!

Erastus Smith Jones -and-
Mary Elizabeth Guiberson

A very interesting background too!

Now we need to figure out who were Erastus's parents (b. 1833)! LOL...