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People Names and Dates

Full Name Ethel Downen Smith
AKA Full Name
People ID 693053
Title
First Name Ethel
AKA First Name
Nickname
Middle Name
AKA Middle
Patronymic/Matronymic
Priorsurnames
Surname Smith
AKA Surname
Father's Surname Downen
Mother's Surname Buchanan
Suffix
Gender Female
Full Birth Date If Known 1888-03-15
Birth Year 1888
Birth Month 3
Birth Day 15
Full Death Date If Known 1979-02-24
Death Year 1979
Death Month 2
Death Day 24

Events, Dates and Places

Event Date Geo Top Level Geo 2nd Level Geo 3rd Level Geo 4th Level Geo 5th Level Notes
Birth1888/03/15USAIllinoisGallatin
Last Benefit (SSA)1979/02USAFloridaPinellasSaint Petersburg
Death1979/02/24USAFloridaPinellas

Relationships

Relationship Related To Relative's People ID Relative's Birth Year Relative's Death Year Other Date (typically Marriage Date)
Daughter ofCornelia Buchanan Downen68071418561892
Daughter ofJohn Bush Downen66281418621937
Sister ofLois Downen69285418911892
Half Sister ofStella Mae Downen Blackard69304218801952
Half Sister ofJames Emmett Downen69303718931972
Half Sister ofWorthy Elizabeth Downen Dagley66861119001974

Military Service
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Rank If Known Or Highest Or Final Rank Branch of Service Beginning Date if Known End Date if Known

Military Actions Served During

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Interment, Inurnment or Memorialization Information

Cemetery Not Known
Address
City/Town N/A
County/District N/A
State/Province N/A
Postal/Zip Code
Country/Principality N/A
Organization
Property Type
Has Marker
No Marker
Is Cenotaph
GPS/LatLong Coordinates
End of Interment RecordIf there are additional interments or cenotaphs for this person they will appear below
  

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Other Information

Biographical or other information about the person

https://mills-sfv.com/Genealogy/GLS/People/Text/693053.txt

One of Ethel's nephews (a son of her half-brother) popped up on Find A Grave in May 2021 and it got me poking around in that branch of the Downen line again. I had put up a page on Ethel's father John "Bush" Downen around 10 years ago, and looking at the page again it jogged my memory on some thngs. I will make a few changes to that page once I'm done with this, since it was done so long ago I have gotten a few more things straight since then.

I got a bee in my bonnet about Ethel and did some more digging around looking for her with some of the tools I have now which I didn't have 10 years ago. I had a death year for her of 1985 and since I've gotten to be a real fanatic about sourcing things and making sure as much stuff is accurate as I can, I started looking into that again.

There is a record for Ethel on Family Search, and it had her birth date (which is on her dad's grave marker in Gallatin County, Illinois). There was no death date listed however, so I started searching for that. I knew I had seen a death year of 1985 but I didn't know what the source was for that or if it was accurate.

Ethel married George William Smith between 1910 and 1912. George is believed to have passed away in 1952, but I have no idea where. I haven't found them after the 1930 census. And looking for someone with a surname of Smith is always a pain in the ass.

One of the nice things about GenealogyBank is that with a subscription to it you get a social security death master file search that lets you plug in a specific birth date for a person and combinations of first and last names and possible death dates. It's a bit cumbersome to set up but it is useful, I have found women on several occasions who had gotten married and I knew their birth date but not their married names. I wasn't sure if Ethel had remarried after George had died so I thought this might be handy.

I did find a match, but with a last name like Smith, you're never completely sure. I found an Ethel Smith who died in Florida in 1979 who fit the bill completely, she had the right birthday and her social security number was issued in Illinois, which meant that there was no reason for this NOT to be the correct Ethel. Her SS DMF entry was matched by a Florida death index entry which gave the exact date and the county of death.

The only thing that bothered me was, where did that other death date of 1985 come from? It was specific down to the month (December) which implied it came from the social security death master file. It was supposed to be in Illinois, which would make sense as well, although the SS DMF entries don't actually give you the place of death, only the last residence and/or last benefit, which may or may not be the same as the actual place of death.

I got frustrated enough to open up Ancestry and look at it again. I let my Ancestry membership lapse several years ago but I can still look at a lot of the raw information in my tree, I just can't pull up some of the sources without them nagging me to renew my membership.

Doing a little poking around in Ancestry solved the mystery. Whoever thought Ethel had died in 1985 had mixed up Ethel (maiden name Downen) Smith who was born in March 1888 with Denia Ethel (maiden name Smart) Downen who was born in July 1888. Denia was in my database since she had married Clarence Frederick Downen.

Here's a link to Denia's page, by the way.

This is the rookiest of all rookie mistakes, and this kind of thing is why when I see stuff sourced from Ancestry I take everything with a grain of salt until I can independently verify it. I had used that date 10 years ago without independently verifying it, but it was wrong then and it's still wrong now.

BTW, this is not to say that sometimes married women don't lose their married names and go back to their maiden names -- I've had it happen twice in my immediate family. But most of the time it doesn't happen. The worst problem with that kind of thing is multiple marriages and figuring out which husband's name ended up on the wife's marker. Getting back to the two Ethels, the other tell in this case is that the birth dates didn't match, although the birth years did.

Again, I'm not absolutely sure that Ethel Downen Smith died in Florida in 1979. Since I apparently can't get her death certificate from Florida until 2029 (they have a 50 year hands off period for issuing D/Cs to people who aren't immediate family or representatives of an estate or something like that) it might take a while to know for sure. I have had no luck at all finding an obituary, of course.

In any event, for now I'm going with the death date of 1979 in Florida. The other information is just wrong, and barring some other information surfacing which might reveal a different death date, I'm assuming this is correct. I'm still looking for Ethel's husband George as well, but again, that Smith surname is just a royal pain in the ass.







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Family Search ID K2M2-NPF
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Record Entry Date 2021-05-06 14:43:07
Record Last Edit Date 2021-05-06 14:43:07

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