Out of Town News in Local Papers

A big section of my brick wall is my Great Grandmother, Bertha C. Layton.  I knew she had remarried when my Great Grandfather died and moved to York County, Virginia.  I also knew she died in childbirth.  All of that information came from burial records for Mt. Carmel Cemetery in Baltimore (and family lore).  The one nagging problem was that I could not find her in York County.  There was a ten year span between her first husband’s death in Baltimore and her death in Grafton, Virginia.  So far I couldn't find marriage records, census records or death records.  The Mt. Carmel records told me she died in Grafton, York County and that her last name was now Rodgers, but I could not find any other confirmation.

I turned my attention back to Baltimore to see if there were more clues there.  Her mother and siblings remained in Baltimore so I decided to look in the papers there.  I went to the excellent Baltimore Sun archives and searched for Bertha Rodgers in 1904.  The cemetery information told me Bertha was buried in October 1904 so I looked for any articles from October and . . . BINGO!  There was a hit and for $3.95 I gained instant access to a PDF of the article:  

The article mentions her husband, “Captain Rodgers,” and the fact that she had an infant daughter that did not survive.  There was a lot of good information in this short blurb from out of town and it further confirmed information I had previously unearthed.


Thanks to looking at the problem a little differently there is now one less brick in my wall and a new lead to search -- the mysterious "Captain Rodgers"...