Blog Post Nine
Photo by Jill Dimond
Finding the Blains, Part 4
Shifting Focus
We left off switching gears from William Blain to Jane Blain. To recap, William and Jane had settled in Ontario and finished raising their family there. Jane had died in Ontario sometime before 1911 because she appears in the 1901 Census of Canada but not in the 1911 collection. I already had Jane’s obituary but it was a clipping from an unknown paper from an unknown date. I noticed right away that Jane’s surname was spelled ‘Blain’ in this obituary compared to William’s being spelled ‘Blane’ in his obituary and in the cemetery index compiled by the Manitoba Genealogical Society. This tells me there was a lot of guessing involved in spelling the surname. Did William know how it was originally spelled? One would think he provided the spelling for Jane’s obituary but, of course, this is not guaranteed. Was there ever a single determined spelling of his family surname? All of the information in the obituary matched what I knew about Jane and it included the cemetery that Jane was buried in and this was an important choice of words: “Mrs W J Blain, of North Russell, was laid to rest in North Russell Cemetery on Tuesday.” It doesn’t say that she would be buried there, it doesn’t suggest that the intention was to bury Jane in the North Russell Cemetery. Rather, it says she was buried there suggesting the burial happened before the obituary was written. What I needed was confirmation of Jane’s burial with proof of some kind, such as a headstone or an index entry, from the cemetery or the Ontario Genealogical Society. I also needed to find the death date to find a death record.
Jane Blain’s obituary, unknown date, unknown paper.
Which Came First?
Was the obituary written before the burial? Did the burial happen before the obituary was written? I thought I might check FindAGrave.com because the volunteers that contribute to the site usually manage to document the majority of the cemeteries. I checked here first just see what I would find, but curiously I found nothing in the North Russell Cemetery or other local cemeteries for Jane. Forging ahead, I started searching for a death record so that I could have the death date to help me find the burial confirmation. A simple search for Jane Blain/Blaine/Blane resulted in finding an entry for Jane Blain in the Ontario, Canada, Deaths and Deaths Overseas, 1869-1948, Russell, 1908 collection. Most pieces of information on this record matched what I had: Jane Blain was born in Ayrshire in Scotland, she was a carpenter’s wife who lived in Russell and was Presbyterian. New information included the cause of death and the date of death which fell into the bracket of time I had expected, between censuses in 1901 and 1911 so 1908 made sense. Her age was off by a couple of years but was not a big concern. But, one concern I did find was that the husband’s name is listed as Joseph Blain, not William. Was this an honest mistake? Possibly. Seeing as everything else either matches exactly or makes sense, the person who wrote it down could have simply written the wrong name. With only one element that did not match, I decided to consider this record the correct one unless I found another reason not to. So, now I had a date of death and a record to prove it. What I needed next was the burial record. With some search engine finesse, I was able to find a name index for the North Russell Cemetery where Jane’s obituary said she definitely was buried. I combed the name index for Blain, Blaine, Blane or names that might have been similar. I checked Russell and surrounding areas but I did not find Jane. I scrolled to the bottom of each index to see if maybe Jane had been listed by her maiden name, Ward. No luck. I found it odd that, even though the obituary said she definitely was buried there, I couldn’t find her name in the index. Could this have been another case of human error? Maybe so. Could she had been buried in an unmarked grave like her husband had been a decade later? Possibly, it’s hard to say because a few scenarios are possible here.
Ontario, Canada, Deaths and Deaths Overseas, 1869-1948, Russell, 1908 collection.
My next search was with the Ontario Genealogical Society’s database TONI (The Ontario Name Index) hoping that I would have the same luck finding a burial index record as I did for William from the Manitoba Genealogical Society. I wanted to get a sense of the kind of results I might get so rather than searching for names I chose to narrow the scope and search for the specific area, North Russell, and broaden the location search from there. I did this because the locations in the results are not consistent; sometimes it’ll say Russell, sometimes it’ll say Prescott and Russell, or some other iteration. Even though the obituary said the burial happened in the North Russell Cemetery, there’s always a chance it’s not accurate, or there’s a chance an entry in the index could say more than just Russell. My search for North Russell garnered only 2 results, neither of which were what I wanted. I changed the location to Russell and got thousands of hits so I reorganized the results by surname. Once I found the correct location I found an entry for Jane and one for her son but they were for the death records I already had and nothing else came up. TONI would surely have an index for thousands of cemeteries, including North Russell Cemetery, but still no results come up which made me wonder about the potential reasons why I wasn’t able to find anything.
The Ontario Name Index search results, Ontario Ancestors (Ontario Genealogical Society)
So, why has it been so hard to find proof of a burial for Jane? After all, her obituary suggests it was a done deal so why would there not be a record of it? When I started my search with FindAGrave.com the entry for North Russell Cemetery said the cemetery was 96% photographed, could her grave be in the 4% not photographed? Maybe, but I wouldn’t count on that as an explanation. I’ve considered the following possibilities:
· Jane’s obituary could have been written before the burial took place, the burial plans could have changed after the obituary was written
· Jane’s obituary could have named the wrong cemetery
· Jane may have been buried in the North Russell Cemetery as written, but could have been buried in an unmarked grave if William could not afford a headstone and this might not have been recorded and/or indexed
· Jane could have been buried in a different cemetery, marked or unmarked
· Plans for Jane could have changed from burial to cremation but this is unlikely as cremation was not popular at the turn of the century and since no other relatives were cremated it is highly unlikely Jane would have been.
It feels like a dead end for finding both a death record for William and a burial record for Jane. Chances are I’ll think of another avenue to pursue and it’s also probable that more records will be available to search. Until then, I’ll set William & Jane Blain aside for now and come back to them again. After all, the search is never over.