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Sunday, August 11, 2013

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.

6 comments:

  1. Trudy is my aunt she was last known living in maryville tn with her ex husband Ray freeman I believe

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  2. I'm jack jr son Henry James Muir ( he didn't like being called jack jr). I knew uncle bobby aunt Trudy aunt Carroll uncle Dallas aunt Barbara I'm looking into the Muir family too

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  3. Good to hear from you!

    Please message me at my public genealogy Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TangledRootsAndTrees?ref=bookmarks

    Or leave your email address on the comment form of the Robert Muir Family blog I am writing: http://robertmuirfamily.blogspot.com

    My grandmother was a sister of your father's father, Henry "Jack" Muir. She, then my father, and now me have been researching the Muir family for several years. I have a lot of information I can share with you and I hope you'll allow me to ask you questions. Grandma lost contact with her brother for several year, though she was able to visit him before he died. But there is a lot we don't know about his descendants.

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  4. You can email me at Johnbritt117@gmail.com

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