Hooray! I finally got a break on my grandfather's records. I had tried everything to find one piece of documentation that held all my grandfather's information. The death certificate was blank with no parents listed. The marriage application gave the mother's wrong last name. No birth record could be found for him in any county where he lived. His obituary gave his mother's wrong first name. So I had wracked my brain - what other piece of documentation could I get that would give me the information that I needed? Suddenly it occurred to me - his social security application! That would be the one piece of paper that he would have had to fill out himself. That would be the one government document that would still be available to obtain with just a little effort.
So I got it two weeks ago. After I opened it I did my own little happy dance right there in the post office parking lot. I was elated all week. It gave his full name as George Allen Dunn, address R.R. 4, Nashville, Ind., age 38, born Oct. 28, 1898 in Boone County, Ind. His father's name was George M. Dunn and his mother was Rose E. Ferguson. It was signed in his own handwriting (I recognized his handwriting) on June 4, 1937. It looked like two people had filled it out because some of it was printed and some of it was in cursive, but I know he had to have had direct imput on this document.
I didn't know that Social Security dated back that far - 1937. I'll keep this information for future use. I may be able to use it again for another ancestor's records. Now I can proceed forward on my application for Jefferson County First Families membership. This document was well worth the wait. Time to get back to my notebook to see which piece of documentation I'm going to have to look for next. One note, I received another copy of the same document a week later. Looks like they were making sure it got sent out.
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