Any more ideas for tracing Steve Clark? I'm thinking of Indiana newspapers. Any idea where to find 'em free?

Question

I’ve had memberships to Ancestry.com for 4 years. I’ve gleaned as much information as I could from there. I’ve checked familysearch.com and found nothing. I’ve gone to Dana, IN and checked out the information I could find there. I traveled to Clinton, IN and obtained Steve’s & Arminta’s (and Arminta’s brother, William’s) marriage record. I have Arminta’s death certificate and obituaries. I have birth records for 2 of Steve’s & Arminta’s children. I’ve located records on Arminta Stribling’s parents and siblings. According to Arminta’s death certificate, Steve was born in Sullivan, IN. I traveled to Sullivan & can’t find any records on Steve’s ancestry. I even checked the church archives based on the reverend that performed Arminta’s eulogy. About all I can think of now, is to check out newspapers to see if there’s anything in them concerning birth, marriage or death records. I’m running out of ideas.

Answer 1

I've read back through your other questions and then looked at the common sources of info. The wall that you're up against is that Indiana (like most of the country at that time) wasn't recording births, deaths or migrations at that point in time. I'm just going to free think for a few minutes, so bear with me.

If Steve was born in Indiana, which it appears he was, then there should be land records for any property that he and his wife owned. In my experience, most young couples in the Midwest were given a piece of their parents' property either as a wedding gift or by working it off on the parents' farms. Unlike birth records, the US has been FANTASTIC about keeping land records back to the beginning of the colonies. I'd contact the Registrar of Deeds for the county where they lived to see if they will do a lookup for you. It's 50/50 that they'll pull the libers for you and do it, but worth a phone call. If they won't do it, then you can go to the Rootsweb site for the county and find a volunteer on there willing to pull the records for you. Once you know who sold them the property, you have something to work with.

The next thing is to check with the county's Probate court to see if any wills were filed for Steve or Arminta. Wills are wonderful for giving details on both the person him/herself and for finding out where their children dispersed to and who survived them. Also, it gives you info where a death certificate is lacking.

Have you contacted the sexton's office at the cemetery where they were buried to see what records of birth/marriage/death are on file there? When given custody of a body, the cemetery is given certain serious record keeping responsibilities. If you can get them to pull their records, you may find more than you bargained for...including the names of all relatives buried in that cemetery.

It's unlikely that there will be any military records on him...unless he enlisted for the Plains wars. But you could check it out. He's a few years too old to have to register for the WWI draft.

Ultimately,. your best best for finding more information on him and his parents is to contact every church in the area that was in existence when he was born and ask for baptismal records on him. Those records should tell you who his parents were...and godparents...most of whom were relatives.

The other thought that came to me is that you might check and make sure there wasn't a Sullivan township elsewhere in the state than where you were looking. They were sneaky that way!

Lastly, have you gone to the Indiana State Archives or worked through Rootsweb to see what local resources may not be on the internet but would be helpful to you? Try these:
http://www.in.gov/icpr/archives/databases/
http://www.rootsweb.com/~insulliv/
http://www.state.in.us/icpr/

Answer 2

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Answer 3

Hey Lyn,

Did you try the state of Indiana vital records? Do you know when Steve was born? The date? or approximate date? You should be able to get a birth certificate from the State, assuming he was actually born in Indiana.

You say you got the marriage record, did that not list Steve's parents? It is suppose to, and it should give their ages when the marriage occurred, and their place of birth.