Emma J Haitz Marries Elwood Griffith

1938 Marriage License and Certificate
Leonard E Griffith and Emma J Haitz

The 1938 marriage document for my great-aunt Emma J Haitz and Leonard E Griffith can be found in the Ohio, County Marriages, 1789-2013 database on Family Search.  From it, I was able to learn several new pieces of information while it also raised a couple of questions.  

I was not aware that Emma's husband was named Leonard.  All I have ever seen or heard was Elwood.  For this marriage license application, he stated his birthdate as February 7 and since he was 20 years old that previous February.  He still resided in the town and was a truck driver there.  His parents were Marion Griffith and Selma Shelton.  It was his first marriage.

Emma J Haitz was about 5 years older than her husband according to this document.  Her date of birth was December 7 and her 26th birthday was just around the corner from the time she and Elwood were granted the marriage license.  I do not know what Emma's middle name was and finding out has been added to my To-Do list.  Her parents were Joseph and Henrietta (Koehler) Haitz and she was a housekeeper, most likely helping her mother at their house in Ripley, Ohio.  She had not been previously married.

Due to Leonard's age, the consent of his father was required and Marion's signature is below that of the couple's.

The Rev. Father Anthony Hoch of St. Michael Catholic Church in Ripley married the couple.  His signature can be found on the bottom of the marriage certificate that was filed and recorded in probate court on December 22, 1938.  Therein lies the big question I have about this marriage.  The date that Father Anthony wrote on the marriage certificate is December 26, 1938, but how can a certificate be filed before the marriage was performed?  Did Father Anthony make a mistake in writing the date?  Was the marriage performed on November 26 instead of December?  Writing the wrong month would be an easy mistake to make, especially if the calendar had already turned by the time Father Anthony had completed this form.  It can be easily seen that he had already written Leonard's name where the date is indicated.  

My plan is to try to find a wedding announcement in The Ripley Bee that will clear up the mystery when I can get a chance to take a road trip to Ohio.  Until then, the question remains!

Evidentia and the Obituary of Joseph Haitz

My Genealogy Do-Over is going to take me forever!  I decided to concentrate on my maternal grandfather’s Haitz family in hopes that I will have a lot of it correctly cited, proven, and entered into Family Tree Maker Mac 3 before the reunion in the fall.  I would really like to be able to take a large chart of some sort, possibly a descendent chart, to show all the relationships between the children and grandchildren of Joseph and Henrietta (Koewler) Haitz, my great grandparents.  They were the parents of sixteen children so it gets a little confusing to someone like me who did not grow up in Ripley, Ohio where they lived all of their lives!  As an Army Brat, my family only visited Ripley about once a year when we were stateside and, even then, I don’t remember getting together with any of my great aunts, great uncles, and their children or grandchildren.  With the exception of my Great-Aunt Elizabeth, I only knew some of their names and I had no faces to go with most of those until pretty recently.  In the past couple of years, I have been fortunate to connect with some of my Haitz family members through social media and my husband and I have enjoyed going to a couple of the annual Haitz family reunions where I met some of them in person.  It’s a huge family to try and get to know!

Death Claims Father of 16, The Ripley Bee, 18 February 1960,
page and column unknown;
copy in possession of Lynn Ann Wayson Koehler.

Today, I entered the information from Joseph Haitz’s obituary into Evidentia.  I was able to enter 28 claims and 97 subjects!  With sixteen children to document, it got rather tedious and I will admit that I was never so happy to hear my washer and dryer go off periodically so that I could take short breaks from all the data entering.  Now, granted, a lot of people probably would not have used Evidentia for an obituary for their great-grandfather whose information is already well known, but I kind of like the idea that all my sources, their citations, and the facts that are in the documents will be located and organized so neatly in one place!  

These are just two screen shots of what I entered into Evidentia from the obituary of Joseph Haitz

One of my to-do list additions is to go back to the Union Township Public Library, find the correct microfilm, and write down the page number of The Ripley Bee where the obituary was published.  It really bugs me that my citation is incomplete!  Oh well, the things I didn’t know enough to do back in the day is why I am now doing this Do-Over!