Sunday's Obituary: Henry "Jack" Muir

Those of you who have liked my Facebook page, Tangled Roots and Trees, know I am researching my elusive grand uncle, Henry "Jack" Muir. All I knew when I started was his birth date, birth location, and his parents names.  I will post soon about everything I've learned about my grandmother's older brother, but today I'd like to focus on his obituary. Receiving the obituary was almost as mysterious as my grand uncle is proving to be.  A kind person started posting comments on Henry page on my family tree on Ancestry.com.  One of the comments was a transcription of his obituary. I later signed up for a day pass for the Times-Picayune archive and downloaded the image you see below.

Obituaries can be good sources of genealogical information, and Henry's obituary did that but also caused me to ask more questions.

Henry "Jack" Muir's obituary as published in the New Orleans Times-Picayune

The new information the obituary provided me:

• Henry's death date
• Henry's death state
• Names of Henry's children
• Last name of Henry's third wife, Eppie

New questions the obituary has me trying to answer:

• Who is Ellen Davis? None of the eight known children have Ellen as a first name.
• Who is Trudy? None of the eight known children have Trudy as a first name.
• Who are Alex and Carol Swafford? Henry had a son named Alexander, but why, if this is him, would he have Swafford as a last name?
• Is Sevan Eppie's maiden name or had she been married before ?

I have since learned from the Muir surname message board on Ancestry.com that Henry's youngest daughter, by Eppie, was named Trudy, not Judy as Dad had her listed.

The idea for this post came from Geneabloggers.com.