©2009-2016 Becky Higgins

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Aunt Jule's twins

This picture is a treasure and a mystery all in one. The infants are the twin children of Louise Julia (Ruch) and Charles Brown. According to the family story, they died within days of each other when they were nine months old. The mystery is that I have yet to find documentation of either their births or their deaths. I'm still looking and have at least one clue but, as you may well imagine, there were many Brown families in Chicago between 1901 when they were married and 1920 (census information) when they are no longer living together.

3 comments:

  1. Becky, Their gowns are so long, I've never seen them like that. Maybe because they are twins, it might be easier to find their births, they should be listed together. Too bad about their deaths though. Fortunately, somebody thought to have a photograph taken.
    Thanks for sharing.

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  2. I've had trouble finding the Chicago birth of my great-grandmother as well. I found a residence for the family through city directories. My next step will be to look for churches in the area (to examine their records) as well as neighborhood newspapers. Research in a big city is no easy task!

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  3. Oh, yeah, big cities can be a pain. My husband's family has been in Chicago since the mid-1800s. Things are getting a bit easier what with Cook County Vital Records coming on-line and the LDS pilot program adding cook county records. However, these twins haven't been found in either spot. I do have the Church where the parents were married; just need to call or go myself to see if the twins were christened there.

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