King Rat

401(k) expense ratios

It’s been years since I got to participate in a 401(k) retirement plan. Last time was when I worked at Expedia. I put the amount in that would maximize the employer contribution and didn’t pay much more attention.

The first thing I looked at this time was which investment options were index funds. There’s one index fund option for large-cap funds and one for small-cap funds. Out of 24 options, only two are index funds. That’s deplorable. To illustrate why, I dug around to find the expense ratios for the fund options. It wasn’t as easy to find as I would like, but when I did Fidelity showed it quite nicely.

Name	Category	Gross Expense Ratio	Shareholder Fees
COMPANY STOCK	Company Stock	—	Commission on stock trades: $0.029 per share
MAINSTAY LGCP GR R1 (MLRRX)	Large Cap	0.87%	No additional fees apply.
MFS VALUE R4 (MEIJX)	Large Cap	0.68%	No additional fees apply.
SPTN 500 INDEX INST (FXSIX)	Large Cap	0.05%	No additional fees apply.
ARTISAN MID CAP INST (APHMX)	Mid-Cap	1.03%	No additional fees apply.
ARTISAN SM CAP VALUE (ARTVX)	Small Cap	1.24%	No additional fees apply.
VANG SM GR IDX INST (VSGIX)	Small Cap	0.08%	No additional fees apply.
FID DIVERSIFD INTL K (FDIKX)	International	0.81%	Short term trading fees of 1% for shares held less than 30 days.
DODGE & COX BALANCED (DODBX)	Blended Fund	0.53%	No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2005 (FFKVX)	Blended Fund	0.50%	No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2010 (FFKCX)	Blended Fund	0.54%	No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2015 (FKVFX)	Blended Fund	0.57%	No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2020 (FFKDX)	Blended Fund	0.59%	No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2025 (FKTWX)	Blended Fund	0.62%	No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2030 (FFKEX)	Blended Fund	0.67%	No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2035 (FKTHX)	Blended Fund	0.68%	No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2040 (FFKFX)	Blended Fund	0.68%	No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2045 (FFKGX)	Blended Fund	0.69%	No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2050 (FFKHX)	Blended Fund	0.69%	No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K 2055 (FDENX)	Blended Fund	0.69%	No additional fees apply.
FID FREEDOM K INCOME (FFKAX)	Blended Fund	0.45%	No additional fees apply.
MIP II CL 1	Bond Investments	0.56%	No additional fees apply.
PIM TOTAL RT INST (PTTRX)	Bond Investments	0.46%	No additional fees apply.

I’ve highlighted the index fund for large-cap and the option with the next lowest expense ratio, and the same for the small-cap index fund. Those percentages indicate the amount the fund managers skim off the top every year. As a retirement saver, you never even see it because they don’t list this percentage in how much you make. They could do this (examples use a 1% expense ratio for arithmetic convenience):

Investment		$10,000
Increase		$500
Fee		-$105
Total		$10,395

Instead, they do this:

Investment		$10,000
Increase		$395
Total		$10,395

Notice in my example, the fee is a percentage of the total, not of the increase. An average fund manager might make the investor $500. An extraordinary fund manager might make $700. The average fund manager charges $105. The extra-ordinary one charges $107. Now, you might think you are getting a steal of $200 for only $2 more, but the real travesty is that the average manager gets $100 for very little work. To see that, look at an index fund.

The small-cap index fund I highlighted uses CRSP US Small Cap Growth Index to benchmark. Compared against their own benchmark, they lose over the last three months but just barely: return of 1.58% vs. the benchmark return of 1.6%. They compare very closely because all an index fund does is buy exactly what’s in the index.

For comparison, the actively managed fund uses Russell 2000 Value as it’s benchmark index. Compared against that, the managers lost 0.28% vs. the index’s gain of 1.78%. These managers are trying to beat the index by picking better investments than the index, charging for their “expertise”, and losing.

Now, that’s a short period of time and perhaps at other times the actively managed fund does better. But over time, index funds have better returns than actively managed funds. There are exceptions, but those options aren’t pertinent to the broad market investments that are available in a 401(k).

So basically, those investment options I have? I’m giving away $60 (for the large cap fund) to $115 (on the small cap fund) every year for nothing (on a baseline portfolio of $10,000). If I’m saving money every year for retirement, that amount grows every year, and cuts into the compounded interest every year.

All of this stuff is pretty well written about all over, but regular people don’t pay attention for a variety of reasons. I’m not naming my employer here, but they really should be doing better by their employees.

Blanshard township property tax assessment rolls

One of the questions I have about Patrick Parker and Mary Murphy is when they emigrated from Canada to the United States. Their family appears in the Canadian census in Blanshard township, Perth county, Canada West on 11 Jan 1852. The next recorded place I have for them is in Glen Haven township, Grant county, Wisconsin on 1 Jun 1860.

I can narrow the time of emigration by looking at his son James Parker. James requested his first papers in January 1859 in the Grant County District Court. James married Ellen Neagle in Jun 1857 in Middlesex county, Canada West, just across the county line from Blanshard township. James has two sons in the 1860 US Census, John Patrick and Napolean. John Patrick’s birth was likely in July 1858 in Wisconsin. If correct, James emigrated to the United States between Jun 1857 and Jul 1858. More likely than not, Patrick emigrated with his son.

One record series I thought might confirm that is the series at the Family History Library, Blanshard township property tax assessment rolls, 1851-1899, specifically the film covering 1851 to 1866. I ordered it back in December, but a new job and other life issues kept me from reviewing it until this past week. Luckily, I remembered to renew the rental before it expired in February.

This is what I found. In 1851, Patrick Parker appears paying taxes on lot 16 in concession 9. This is the same lot and concession where he was recorded in the 1848 Canadian Census.

Blanshard Tax Roll 1851 - Patrick Parker — Blanshard Tax Roll 1851 – Patrick Parker

The microfilm is missing the years 1852 through 1854, but luckily Patrick shows up in 1855, 1856, and 1857, all for the same lot and concession. (Images below don’t include the second page which shows the concession/lot.)

Blanshard Tax Roll 1855 - Patrick Parker — Blanshard Tax Roll 1855 – Patrick Parker

Blanshard Tax Roll 1856 - Patrick Parker — Blanshard Tax Roll 1856 – Patrick Parker

Blanshard Tax Roll 1857 - Patrick Parker — Blanshard Tax Roll 1857 – Patrick Parker

In 1858, Patrick Parker is not to be found on the tax roll. Instead, a James McDonald owns lot 16 on concession 9. And the roll for 1857 has the name J. McDonald to the right of Patrick Parker in a column headed, Owner. I believe this means the land had been sold to James McDonald prior to the time of the assessment, or possibly it was a notation put in after the fact when James McDonald did purchase it. This narrows the sale of the property to late 1856 or 1857. The tax rolls appear to be filed in the spring of each year.

Blanshard Tax Roll 1858 - James McDonald — Blanshard Tax Roll 1858 – James McDonald

The sale of his property matches the dates of emigration for his son James, making it even more likely he emigrated about the same time. The next place to look is to see if any records show him purchasing land in Grant county Wisconsin about that time.

Lastly, based on plat maps of Blanshard township, here’s the location of the farm today:

Location of Patrick Parker's farm in Blanshard on satellite — Location of Patrick Parker’s farm in Blanshard on satellite

Merging Ancestry.com trees

When I first started using Ancestry.com, I made the mistake of creating one tree for my father’s side of the family, one for my mother’s US family, one for her Swedish family, and one for my step-father’s family. Trust me when I tell you this is a dumb idea. The principle holds for other lineage linked databases as well. If trees are actually unrelated, create separate trees. But in the case above, the trees are related, by me.

Having separate trees means that all sorts of meta-analysis is hard. It also means that I am constantly switching between trees as I research various branches of my family.

So I started merging trees. But Ancestry.com makes it hard to merge trees. In fact, you can’t on their web site. The only thing you can do is copy individuals between trees, one at a time, in a multi-step process for each.

I noticed today that their desktop software, Family Tree Maker, can merge trees. It can also synchronize with Ancestry.com. Combining the two features means I can merge trees. So I forked out the $32 to get it, just for the merging capability. I use GRAMPS as my main database.

It took me all of 3 hours to get my four trees merged into one. There are some issues, but it basically worked.

The main issues I see so far:

Attachments were moved between trees weirdly. For some, the record for the attachment was transferred but the attachment itself was not. Instead, Ancestry shows a place-holder.

Attachments with place-holders
Some attachments had originally been contributed by other people. When I attached them to my tree, Ancestry kept the link and attribution to the original contributor. After merging trees, Ancestry now attributes the image to me, and there appears to be no easy and good way to fix it.
Image attribution – Ancestry.com

Image mis-attribution – Ancestry.com
And while sources and citations are copied as part of the merge, links to other people’s member trees are not. I’ve found links to other trees useful as the feature notifies me when another researcher changes something about a person in which I’m interested. I have to re-link all the profiles one by one.

Minor issues that pale in comparison to the time saved. I figure it would have taken me months of work to merge these trees one individual at a time.

For King County Transportation District Proposition No. 1

This proposition pisses me off for two reasons. The first is that we have to even have to vote for it at all. The Washington State Legislature has failed for years to give King County the authority to fund Metro in a sustainable fashion. So now we’re stuck with two options: cut Metro service by huge amounts or use regressive sales and vehicle taxes to fund it. While the latter option sucks, it’s better than cutting bus service. The second reason is that we aren’t using 100% of the proceeds to pay for bus service. We’re using 40% of it for roads. Theoretically, road maintenance rather than construction. But still, Metro needs the money.

Metro bus on Rainier — Photo by Adam Fagen (CC By)

So here’s what happens if we pass it on the revenue side: a sales tax of 0.1% and $60 dollar vehicle tab fee ($20 more than current fees), with a $20 rebate for poor people. On the expense side: $80 million per year for Metro which will stave off cutting 5 dozen routes completely and reducing service on tens of others. $50 million goes toward maintaining roads and road safety.

The anti-proposition 1 side says Metro needs to cut costs first. Metro has already cut $130 million in annual costs. Really what these people are pissed about is that poor people who ride buses are getting a freebie. That’s what they think, that transit riders are getting a subsidy while respectable drivers aren’t etting one. Never mind that they already have huge road subsidies.

I have a car. I am happy to pay the $60, and I won’t get the subsidy. But I also ride the bus. Metro service is more convenient than driving much of the time, and necessary for many people. It reduces greenhouse gas emissions over driving. It reduces congestion for cars. There are all sorts of benefits from bus service. We need Metro. It’s as simple as that.

Vote YES on Proposition No. 1.

Buried Cherry Cookies

I successfully made cookies for the first time last week. Every other attempt failed miserably, to the point where I’d given up. Cookies are supposed to be easy, but apparently not for me. I’d been invited to an event where cookies were expected, so I gave it a go.

I found this recipe in an old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook called Cookies for Kids. It has photos of kids aged 5 to 10 years old making cookies in it. I figured this would be hard for me to screw up.

I doubled the recipe from the book though. I think it worked out better because there was more stuff for the mixer to work with and so it all got mixed better. Directions below are how I did it, not a copy from the book.

Equipment

Stuff I need to make sure I have cleaned and available.

large mixing bowl
medium mixing bowl
small saucepan
hand mixer
2 cookie sheets
parchment paper
storage bins for finished cookies
bowl for drained cherries
cup to hold cherry juice

Ingredients

butter, 2 sticks, room temperature
sugar, 2 cups
eggs, 2
vanilla extract, 3 teaspoons
all purpose flour, 3 cups
unsweetened cocoa powder, 1 cup
baking soda, ½ teaspoon
baking powder, ½ teaspoon
salt, ½ teaspoon
maraschino cherries, 2 jars (this was overkill, but I used more than 1 jar worth)
semisweet chocolate chips, 12 ounce package
sweetened condensed milk, 1 cup

Instructions

Add butter and sugar to a mixing bowl
Beat with a hand mixer until fluffy and thoroughly mixed
Add eggs and vanilla
Beat well
In another mixing bowl, stir together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt
Add part of flour mixture to butter mixture
Beat until well mixed
Repeat last two steps until all of the flour is combined with the butter
Shape the dough into 1 inch balls, placing each on parchment paper on a cookie sheet about 2 inches apart (made enough to fill about 2½ sheets)
Press thumb into the middle of each cookie, squashing them down
Drain cherries, reserving the juice in a cup
Put a cherry in the indentation in each cookie
Combine chocolate chips and condensed milk in a saucepan
Melt over low heat, stirring occasionally
Stir in enough cherry juice to make the chocolate spoonable
Spoon a dollop of chocolate over each cookie, enough to cover the cherry
Bake at 350° til edges of the cookies are firm (was about 13 minutes for me, book said 10)
Transfer cookies to a cool surface to cool

Gallery of photos at most steps taken below. Forgot to take photos of the finished cookies, which were tasty, by the way.

The Age of Mary Parker

After a couple of years of little progress mostly due to focusing on other parts of my family tree, I’ve been making huge progress with the Parkers. You’ve probably noticed the multiple posts about them recently.

A few weeks ago, I noticed there was a Find-A-Grave memorial for a Leonard Parker at the church cemetery in Saint Mary, Ontario. Leonard Parker is reputed to be the brother of my ancestor, Patrick Parker. I wrote to the person who put up the memorial, asking if they were related. The answer was yes, and we exchanged some information about our respective family trees. One of the things she clued me in to was that the parish registers for some of the Roman Catholic churches have been scanned and are on FamilySearch. Not indexed, but available.

Which brings me to my great great grandmother, Mary Parker Ryan. She married William Dennis Ryan in 1864, had six children, and died of typhus in 1875, not quite eleven years into her marriage. She had a short and somewhat forgotten life. Every time I mentioned her to one of my relatives, I get blank looks. Apparently my great grandparents and grandparents generations talked so rarely about her that no one in the next generation had heard of her. That sort of reaction is part of why I’ve been drawn to genealogy, to remember the people who haven’t been.

The main source of information I had on Mary was her grave monument in a small cemetery on a hill about a mile east of Patch Grove, Wisconsin. I visited Saint Johns Cemetery in June 2011.

Grave marker for Mary Ryan (1841-1875) — Grave marker for Mary Ryan

It’s quite a nice monument for the time. William Ryan cared enough to spend some dough on it. Here’s a close up of the inscription.

inscription on Mary Ryan's monument — inscription on Mary Ryan’s monument

It reads:

Mary
Wife of Wm. D. Ryan.
Born Jan. 7, 1841. In
Ramsey, Township of Perth.
Canada West. Died
Feb. 20, 1875,
Aged 34 yrs. 1 mo. 13 ds.

The inscription has a number of problems with it. The Parkers lived for a time in Blanshard township in Perth County, Canada West. There is no Ramsey township in Perth County, and as far as I can tell, there never has been. The only Ramsey township I’ve been able to find is in Lanark County, Ontario. That sort of fits with another family legend, that Mary’s mother was one Mary Murphy who was part of the Peter Robinson settlement of Canada. One of those settlements was in Ramsey township. I have doubts as to whether Mary Murphy really was part of that endeavor, but there’s a geographical connection at least. Oh, and the nearest city to Ramsey township is Perth. My working hypothesis was that this particular Ramsey was the one indicated on her grave.

Additionally, her death certificate and other accounts put her date of death as 23 Feb 1875. Three days difference isn’t that big of a deal. Still…

A further problem is that there is a second marker for Mary in front of the monument:

You’ll notice this one gives a year of birth as 1840, rather than 1841. Rather confusing.

And, as it turns out, both are likely wrong. Going back to the thing above about the Ontario parish registers being online… I looked at the register for Perth’s Saint John the Baptist parish. There was no entry for Mary Parker in 1841. Her brothers Stephen and Patrick were there in 1835 and 1837, but no Mary. On the first perusal, I missed it. But on the second look through, I saw an entry for a Mary Parker in 1839:

On the 28th day of February 1839 the undersigned Priest of this Parish
has Baptized Mary seven weeks old of the lawful marriage of Patrick
Parker & Mary Murphy of Ramsey.
Sponsors Nicholas Dison and Emilia Dison

That’s an entry in a contemporaneous journal of parish actions. Unless it’s for a different Mary Parker, it’s pretty convincing evidence she was actually born in January 1839. January 7th fits, so I’m guessing that’s her actual birthday.

However, by the time the monument was erected, people were guessing at her actual age. Maybe she’d shaved off a couple of years. Maybe she forgot or didn’t know. Maybe the monument was erected years after her death. I’ve no idea the reason.

As an added bonus for this post, among the effects found in my great aunt’s house last year when she died was this photograph:

On the back is the inscription “Mary Park” and the paper is torn. Is it my ancestor or another Mary Parker or did whoever wrote the inscription just guess? I’ve no idea.

Share Icon and Creative Commons

Share Icon (Alex King/CC By)

Alex King is the creator of the Share Icon. I can’t say whether he still owns the copyright or not, but the the thing about Creative Commons licenses is that they are irrevocable. ShareThis Inc., or whatever their legal name is, cannot revoke the license.

So long as I give credit to Alex King (which I just did) and link to the license (which I just did), I can use this image however I want, per the terms of the license:

You are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

The Creative Commons Corporation states to people who wish to license works under the license:

To be clear, however, you may not use a trademark license to modify or restrict the rights granted under the CC license.

So fuck you and your trademark restrictions, ShareThis.

Anton Weiss in Cassville

There was another item in the map I found yesterday that is of interest to me. On one of the other sheets is a city map of Cassville, where my great great grandfather Anton Weiss operated a hardware store for close to 50 years.

Just as I was able to find Patrick Parker in Glen Haven, Anton Weiss store shows up in this map too:

Map of Cassville in 1868 showing Anton Weiss

Here’s what the location looks like today:

Denniston and Amelia, Cassville in 2013 (Google Street View)

I’ve made one visit to Cassville, but at the time I didn’t know the location of the family home.

Patrick Parker in Grant County

My genealogy white whale since shortly after I started has been finding Patrick Parker and his wife Mary Murphy. I’ve written about them here multiple times. I’d found pretty solid evidence on what happened to 8 of their 10 children, the only two where I was missing basic information were the sons James and John. Last month I found good evidence for James. Two weeks ago I found John, though I haven’t pursued it much yet.

But as much information as I’ve found on all their children, the evidence I have for the pair themselves is aggravatingly small. I’ve located them together in the 1851 Canada Census, the 1860 US Census, and the 1870 US Census. I have a possible grave site for Patrick in Iowa. And Mary Murphy can be found in the 1885 Iowa Census. That’s the sum total of direct evidence I have for them.

I have indirect evidence for them. I know they arrived in Canada between 1832 and 1835, based on the listed countries of birth for their children. The death records for several children list their names. The grave marker for my great great grandmother Mary Parker Ryan gives a place of birth for her, which places Mary Murphy in that place at least.

Today I was looking through the online maps collection for the Wisconsin Historical Society, and I saw they had added a map for Grant County from 1868, and the description included “shows townships and sections, landownership, …” The earliest landownership map for Grant County that I’ve viewed came from 1878 and the Parkers were not to be found on it. So, I took a peek at the 1868 map:

1868 map of Grant County, Wisconsin showing the Parker and Ryan farms highlighed

Lo and behold, there he is! The P. Parker farm is just southwest of North Andover (a town which is no longer a town). On the map, I also highlighted the location of the farm for Patrick Parker’s son in law, William Dennis Ryan. And with handy Google Maps, I can show you where the Parker farm is on today’s maps.

This is the first direct piece of evidence for their existence that I’ve found in nearly 2 years. You don’t know how thrilled I am about this.

James Parker in Wisconsin and California

A page from a compiled genealogy of the Parkers

I’ve previously written about Patrick Parker and his wife Mary Murphy. One of the family legends passed on to me by other researchers was that they had a son names James who went off to California, never to be heard from again.

There is a James Parker who appears in the 1852 Census of Canada in the vicinity of Patrick Parker’s family. He’s born about 1832 in Ireland. However, that census does not list relationships so there’s no telling if he’s a son or some other relation to Patrick. In the 1860 US Census, there’s a James Parker living with Patrick Parker’s family in Glen Haven, Wisconsin. The age listed would put his year of birth about 1832, also in Ireland. Listed below him are Ellen, John and Napolean Parker. The 1860 US Census also does not list relationships, so it’s not certain how they relate to Patrick either. But the placement is typical of an adult son who has married but is still living in the same household as his parents. It’s not certain by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s the most likely possibility.

James, Ellen, John and Napolean Parker in Glen Haven, 1860 — James, Ellen, John and Napolean Parker in Glen Haven

I’ve researched all the other children of Patrick Parker and Mary Murphy who showed up in the United States, and have had some luck with tracking many of their descendants who lived mostly in Iowa. But this James disappeared after 1860.

And last night I found something intriguing. There appears to be a very similar entry for another James Parker in San Joaquin Township, Sacramento County in California, also in 1860.

James Parker in San Joaguin — James, E., John, and N.J. Parker in San Joaquin

Listed with this James Parker are an E., a John, and an N.J. Parker. They have similar ages, though slightly different. They are listed as from Canada and Wisconsin rather than Ireland and Wisconsin. But remarkably similar overall. At this point, I don’t have anything to corroborate this record.

It was at this point that I started writing this post, thinking that I had a something interesting to follow up on for later.

However, as I am wont to do, I added this to my Ancestry.com tree for James Parker. I treat my Ancestry.com tree as a database of possibilities. I’ve even posted a note on it warning other people they should copy my tree at their peril. When I posted this census entry to the family of James Parker, Ancestry went to work and started matching new records. Now that they live in California, it starts ranking California based records higher in its sort. Nothing popped up for James Parker, but four new census entries showed up for John Parker, born in 1858 in Wisconsin and living in California.

The first of these is a John Parker living in Santa Barbara in 1900 with wife Margaret and children John Warren, Mary Ellen, James Galen, and Ruth M. Now, this is also no guarantee that this is the same John Parker. In fact, the link was tenuous enough that I did not add the record to my entry for John Parker even with the database of possibilities caveat. It would just be too hard to unwind if it turned out to be wrong. So I created a new, disconnected family for a new John Parker and recorded it. If the research was a dead end, I could just delete them all, I wouldn’t have to disconnect them from the known Parker tree, and everything would be good.

I also added the 1910 US Census entry for the family (image not included with this post). This one had the same children, except that Mary Ellen is listed as Inez in 1910. Other people on Ancestry had added these two census records to families headed by a John Parker and Margaret Miscall.

The next step in this bread crumb trail of discovery is an entry in Ancestry.com’s California Death Index. The California Death Index is just a list of death certificates that were filed with the state between 1940 and 1997. It’s not a dispositive record without seeing copies of the underlying certificates, but I’ve generally had good luck with the index being correct. I haven’t seen the errors for the database that I’ve seen with other transcriptions.

The entry that I found was this:

Name:	Mary Elleninez Gerard
[Mary Elleninez Parker] 	
Social Security #:	563325739
Gender:	Female
Birth Date:	1 Nov 1890
Birth Place:	California
Death Date:	5 Jun 1981
Death Place:	Orange
Mother's Maiden Name:	Miscall
Father's Surname:	Parker

Mary Elleninez Gerard (neé Parker)? That looks really promising, I thought to myself. Date of birth matches up, and the parents’ surnames match up with what other people had found for John and Margaret. None of those researchers had linked the record to Mary Ellen Parker however. Nevertheless, I added a husband to her with a last name of Gerard so that Ancestry’s search engine would look for her as part of a Gerard family. Nothing popped up immediately.

And nothing else popped up for any of the other family members at the time either. I haven’t been doing real research in this process. This is just following my nose and poking around. It’s late at night and I should go to bed. However…

Last year my great grand aunt Frances died at the age of 103. In June of this year, I picked up five boxes of photos and other personal effects that had been in her possession from a cousin. I’ve been paying my friend Kim to scan all these items so they’d be available for everyone in the family. One of the items is an album containing photos from what appears to be trips my great grandparents Joe and Frances Weiss took. They visited relatives in Colorado, Illinois and California. And toward the back of the album was a photo of a nun with an inscription that appeared to be Sr. M. Germaine Parker. It’s hard to read.

I’ve thought Sister Parker might be a connection to one of the two missing branches of the Parker family. In addition to James Parker, there’s also another John Parker who went missing in records after 1880. He probably exists somewhere, but John Parker is such an incredibly common name and records from the 1800s are often sketchy. I haven’t found anything that matches up with him.

So I pulled out the album and looked for the photo. Sister Parker looks to be in her 30s or 40s, though it’s quite hard to tell with her habit covering everything except her face. I flipped backward through the pages of the album looking for other photos of her. And then I saw this photo:

Jeanne Margaret and Mary Ellen Gerard – ’21

Gerard! Mary Ellen Inez Parker Gerard! Could these be her children? Must search harder for her! And bingo! In 1920, there’s this census record:

Henry Gerard – 1920 in Los Angeles

Henry and Inez Gerard, living on Gardner Street in Los Angeles with children Jeanne and Mary Ellen, aged 4 and 1¼ years old. Those are the two girls from the photo. And Inez matches up with the daughter of John Parker.

And the most likely reason my great grandparents would be visiting the Gerard family that matches up with this trail is because they are related.

This is just the beginning. I’ll have a lot of hard work to prove all of this. That record for James Parker may be incorrect. James may be a cousin of my great great grandmother Mary Parker and not her oldest brother. James himself may disappear from available records. But my great grandparents did not visit the Gerard family randomly.

This is why family genealogists should research the descendants of their ancestors. The descendants provided the link that may lead to valuable information about James Parker and ultimately my third great grandparents, Patrick and Mary Parker. had I not gone down the tree, James Parker may have remained among the disappeared.