Day: October 28, 2026

By Coni Dubois

Her own death certificate doesn’t know who she was.

When Mary Griffith died in Rome City, Indiana, on Friday, July 5, 1901, the man who reported her death was her son-in-law, Dr. W. G. Cameron — a man who had known her for years, in whose home she had been living. And where the certificate asked for her father’s name, he had to write “Unknown.” Where it asked for her mother’s maiden name: “Unknown.” Their birthplaces: “Unknown,” and “Unknown.”

This Wednesday I’m going back for the woman behind the name Parker — and the first surprise of the hunt is that Parker turns out to be real. What’s missing is everything behind it.

The woman as the records show her

Mary Parker married Elihu S. Griffith (born March 14, 1817, at Richburg, Allegany County, New York) about 1840 — the marriage itself is carried by family knowledge and the census household trail; no marriage record has been read yet, and that record is one of the keys this wall needs (more on that below).

Together they raised five children:

• Sheldon D. Griffith (born February 1841–43)
• Elizabeth Fidelia Griffith (born 1845, married Andrews)
• D. Elton Mathye Griffith (born July 30, 1849, at Girard, Pennsylvania)
• Lavira Matilda Griffith (born January 26, 1851, married Stetson E. Southworth)
• Ida M. Griffith (born 1857, married Dr. William G. Cameron)

The census trail follows the family the way so many New York families moved — a short hop, then a long one:

• 1850, Girard, Erie County, Pennsylvania: Eli (33, farmer), Mary (30, born New York), Sheldon 7, Elizabeth 5, and baby “Mysthus” 1, born in Pennsylvania. And one extra man in the house — Napoleon VanPatton, 28, born New York, a currier by trade. Hold that name. A boarder who travels with a family is often kin, and he comes back in the hunt plan below.
• 1860, Girard, Pennsylvania: the household grown to seven, the younger three children born in Pennsylvania.
• 1870, Sheridan Township, Calhoun County, Michigan: the classic “Yorker” jump — New York and lake-shore Pennsylvania families poured into southern Michigan farmland in those years, and the Griffiths went with them.
• 1880, Clarence, Calhoun County, Michigan: Elihu 63, farming; Mary 60, keeping house; Ida 23, still at home.

Elihu died at Clarence on February 14, 1886, and lies in Clarence Center Cemetery. By 1889 the Battle Creek city directory lists Mary Griffith, widow of Elihu, at 718 N. Eaton. And about 1890 — her Indiana doctor’s certificate says he attended her from that year — the widow made the last move of her life, the commonest move of all: she followed a married daughter. By the 1900 census she is in Albion, Noble County, Indiana, listed plainly as mother-in-law in the home of her daughter Ida and Dr. Cameron, with her son Sheldon, 57, in the same house.

She died there a year later, on July 5, 1901, at 8 p.m., of cancer — five years of it (my book note says cancer of the face) — with exhaustion the immediate cause. She was buried Monday, July 8, in Orange Cemetery, Rome City, Plot 3-15, after a funeral at the Free Will Baptist Church. Her obituary, printed July 12, is three lines long:

“Griffith Mary, mother-in-law of Dr. W. G. Cameron, died last Friday, aged 81 years 3 months and 15 days from cancer of the face. Funeral at the F.W.B. Church Monday. Burial, Orange Cemetery.”

Even “died last Friday” checks out — July 5, 1901 was a Friday. The record-keeping around her death is careful. It’s her beginning nobody could write down.

A moment in Rome City, July 1901: a small Indiana town in high summer, a widow of 81 buried on a Monday from the Free Will Baptist church she had chosen as her own, by a family who loved her, knew her children and her grandchildren — and could not have told the health officer her parents’ names if their lives depended on it. That is how a brick wall is born: not from neglect, but from one generation’s silence becoming the next generation’s blank page.

What this week’s digging already moved

Brick Wall Wednesday usually starts at the wall. This week the wall moved before the post even ran, because three records already sitting in my own files had never been read side by side:

Her death certificate (Indiana, Noble County, Health Officer’s Record No. 92) — read in full. It gives her birthplace as “Conn.” — Connecticut — and then the four Unknowns for her parents.

Her son D. Elton Griffith’s Michigan death certificate (he died December 15, 1916, in Arenac County) — in the box for maiden name of mother, his son wrote “Mary Parker.” For her birthplace, he wrote “Vermont.”

Her daughter Lavera Southworth’s Michigan death certificate (she died May 20, 1927, in Calhoun County) — a different informant, eleven years later, in a different county, wrote in the same box: “Mary Parker.” For her birthplace: “New York.”

Two children. Two informants. Eleven years apart. Both of them, asked for their mother’s maiden name, wrote Parker.

So Parker is not a guess and not a clerk’s fancy — it is the name her own family used for who she was before she married. The wall is no longer “was she a Parker?” The wall now is: which Parker family — and where?

The honest flags — shown, not hidden

Her birthplace is a four-way split, and I won’t pretend otherwise. Connecticut (her death certificate, one informant’s word) · New York (all five federal censuses, 1850–1900, and her daughter Lavera’s certificate) · Vermont (her son Elton’s certificate). New York is the widest pattern. But Elton’s “Vermont” is a loose thread worth pulling, not discarding — a Vermont birth with a New York childhood would fit a family that moved, and it matters for the name question below.

Her birth date is computed, not proven. No record gives it. Her death record’s age — 81 years, 3 months, 15 days, at death on July 5, 1901 — works back to March 21, 1820. My tree has long carried April 21, 1820, from a working note of mine whose subtraction slipped a month (July 5 minus 3 months is April 5, and April 5 minus 15 days crosses back into March). The honest way to print it: born about March 1820, computed from her death record. I’m correcting my own tree the same way I’m showing it to you.

And then there’s “Pasket?” My files carry Mary as “also known as Pasket?” — question mark and all, in my own tree, with no source attached to it anywhere. I have searched my Drive for Pasket and Pasquet and found nothing. It may be a real alternate surname (a stepfather’s name? a French-Canadian Pasquet under a clerk’s spelling — which would sit very comfortably beside a Vermont birth). It may be a misreading of somebody’s handwriting, or a note parked from a fellow researcher’s tree. Until a record carries it, it stays exactly what it is: an unsourced hint with its own question mark, flagged and not built on.

A reader’s note, the day this posted: Linda Stufflebean wrote in with a handwriting observation — in old script, “Pasket” and “Parker” carry the same word-shape (tall, two short, tall, short, short), so a faded “Parker” is easily written down as “Pasket.” I had reached the same thought while writing this piece; hearing it independently from another researcher steadies it. It isn’t proof — but it’s one more reason to read “Pasket?” as a transcription ghost of Parker. Thank you, Linda.

The marriage paper in my tree isn’t real yet, either. Two Indiana marriage-index citations are attached to Mary and Elihu’s marriage in my files — unread, and geographically wrong for a couple who were in New York and Pennsylvania in the early 1840s. Most likely a namesake couple. They stay labeled unverified until somebody reads the actual records.

What would crack it

Any one of these could name her parents:

• Her marriage record, about 1840 — Allegany County, New York, or Erie County, Pennsylvania church registers (New York kept no county marriage records that early). A witness, a bondsman, an officiant from her side of the aisle names her family.
• A Parker will, estate, or deed in Allegany County NY, Erie County PA, or a Vermont town, naming a daughter or sister Mary Griffith.
• The full original obituary — the three lines in my files are a fellow researcher’s extract. Noble County papers often printed a full sketch: born in ___, came to Indiana in ___, survived by a brother in ___. That paper is a named pull.
• The Free Will Baptist Church records of Rome City — her funeral church, her chosen anchor. Membership rolls and letters of transfer often carry a maiden name and the church she came from.
• The Orange Cemetery lot card, Plot 3-15 — lot ownership and burial cards sometimes hold the next-of-kin and birth data the certificate left blank.
• The rest of her children’s certificates — Elizabeth Andrews (died 1912, Michigan), Sheldon Griffith (died October 30, 1921, Michigan), and Ida Cameron (died 1930). Three more informants answering the same two boxes. Elton’s “Vermont” already shows the answers wander — a fourth and fifth voice either steadies Parker in one place, or surfaces that other name outright.

The hunt, in order

1. Finish the children first — pull Elizabeth’s, Sheldon’s, and Ida’s death records, and read the Michigan marriage records already in my files (Michigan marriages name both parents of bride and groom).
2. Rome City — the full obituary, the Free Will Baptist rolls, the cemetery lot card.
3. Work the cluster, not the woman alone. Napoleon VanPatton, the 28-year-old currier boarding with the family in 1850 — Van Patten is an old Albany–Schenectady Dutch name. If he is Mary’s brother or cousin, his family is hers. And Joe Griffith, the researcher my death and obituary notes came through — his files are the first place to ask what “Pasket?” ever was.
4. The 1840 marriage ground — church registers around Richburg and Girard, and the county-history biographical sketches: a son’s or grandson’s printed biography often names the mother’s family outright.
5. Search every drawer for the name — Parker · Pasket / Pasquet / Pasquette · Baskett · Parks — remembering that to a hurried clerk, a flowing “Parker” and a “Pasket” are one bad pen-stroke apart.
6. DNA — cluster my Griffith-line matches and look specifically for Parker — and Pasquet — families of Allegany County, Erie County, and Vermont. A shared cluster with a paper trail would be a genuine lead, labeled as a lead until a record lands.

Still hunting — maybe you hold a piece

If you descend from Elihu and Mary Griffith of Girard, Pennsylvania, or Calhoun County, Michigan — through Sheldon, Elizabeth Andrews, D. Elton, Lavira Southworth, or Ida Cameron — or if your Parker (or Pasquet) family of Allegany County, Erie County, or Vermont has a daughter Mary, born about March 1820, who married a Griffith and vanished west — I would love to hear from you. Somebody’s family Bible, church roll, or letter home knows who her parents were. Her own death certificate didn’t. Maybe yours does.

Sources

We source everything. Every fact above traces to one of these:

1. Death certificate of Mary Griffith, Indiana Death Certificates 1899–1911, Noble County, Health Officer’s Record No. 92 (died July 5, 1901, Rome City) — read in full from my files.
2. Death certificate of D. Elton Mathye Griffith, Michigan Death Records 1867–1950 (Arenac County, died December 15, 1916) — names mother “Mary Parker,” her birthplace “Vermont.”
3. Death certificate of Lavera M. Southworth, Michigan Death Records 1867–1950 (Calhoun County, died May 20, 1927) — names mother “Mary Parker,” her birthplace “New York.”
4. U.S. Federal Censuses — 1850 & 1860, Girard, Erie Co., PA; 1870, Sheridan Twp., Calhoun Co., MI; 1880, Clarence, Calhoun Co., MI; 1900, Albion, Noble Co., IN.
5. Obituary of Mary Griffith, July 12, 1901 (newspaper unnamed in the extract), via the research of Joe Griffith, as carried in my compiled record.
6. Battle Creek, Michigan city directory, 1889 — Mary Griffith, widow of Elihu, 718 N. Eaton.
7. Ancestors of Coni Allen by Coni Dubois — the compiled family record this research started from (Mary Parker entry, pp. 623–626 and 1078–1079).
8. Find A Grave: Mary Griffith #41706990; Elihu S. Griffith #20445967 (index/secondary).

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