A Flea Market Find

While visiting a flea market this week in Kentucky, I noticed a booth with pile after pile of receipts from the 1950s. Hidden among them, I spotted this genealogical document among the receipts:

Ancestry.com Public Trees

At home, I searched the public member trees on Ancestry.com for a George Washington Helm who was born in 1867 and died in 1950. I found three trees. This typed vellum sheet of paper did include information that was not found in any of those trees including:

• • George’s middle name,
  • Malissa’s middle name,
  • the middle names of several of the children,
  • and the two children who died very young!

FindaGrave Memorials

Next, I found the FindaGrave memorial for Lawrence Ray Helm, but he is not linked to anyone.

Then, I found the FindaGrave memorial for his brother, Albert Forest Helm, in the same cemetery. He is also not linked to anyone. (I love that someone is remembering both of these small children by putting flowers on their headstones!)

Lastly, I found the parents, George W Helma and Malissa E Kean, on FindaGrave and linked to their other five children. Only the three surviving children are listed in the attached obituary of the father, “G. W. Helm.” This memorial is in the same county but in a different cemetery, so the family likely moved after the death of the two young children.

Making Connections

My next step is to reach out to the owners of these Ancestry.com trees and FindaGrave memorials and try to reconnect these two babies to their families.