Finding homes for orphan documents

The phone rings at the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center. It's a Tuesday afternoon. I answer, seeing "Wireless Caller" on the ID screen, as usual, and not knowing any more than that.

This time, it's a bereaved person whose loved one collected documents, and they've come across a box of papers they have no earthly idea what to do with. It's a jumble. Newspaper clippings, photographs, what is probably at least one or two copies of a deed or marriage license, with fancy etchings and calligraphy, all of it fragrant, all of it mysterious.

"Can you help me?"

Probably!

I'm a firm believer that a majority of this county's history is tucked into boxes in attics, basements, closets. Every time a county resident passes away, or moves into assisted living, or has a thought-provoking conversation on family history at a holiday, bits and pieces of that history crop up, and often, the person holding that box doesn't know what to do with what they've found, so we get a phone call.

Earlier this month, I got a call from Alice Ireland with the Cape Girardeau County History Center. She's been working on a collection from an individual with memory issues, so the chain of ownership, or provenance, of documents from this collection is hard to establish. She had two documents that appeared to be certificates, possibly in German, dated 1918, religious in nature. That much we could guess, considering one said "Konfirmation" among many other words, and the other had a small picture of Jesus leading sheep. They're beautiful certificates, but the names meant nothing to me, and the plain truth is, since they're not government documents related to Cape Girardeau County, the Archive isn't the home for them -- but maybe the Cape Girardeau County Genealogical Society would be interested?

When I asked, I got the suggestion to contact a history-focused organization in the certificates' home state. So I did. Since the certificates showed the town and county name of origin in Minnesota, I could easily find a historical society there.

The two names -- Hazel Person and Elmer Conrad -- were easy enough to decipher. Since I'm not fluent in German, though, I couldn't get much past that. A quick consult with Renae Farris, regional archivist with the Local Records Program through the Missouri Secretary of State's office, led to a couple of conclusions. One, the certificates appear to be in Swedish, not German, and two, the people named definitely didn't have an immediate, obvious connection to this part of Missouri.

Familysearch.org gave us a little bit more information. Hazel died in 1983 and is buried next to her sister in a Lutheran cemetery. No mention of a marriage.

Elmer was a bit more elusive. He shows up in the census, but I didn't find much more information than that on him.

I've contacted the society and haven't heard back -- not surprising since it's their off season. In the meantime, the certificates are boxed, marked and ready for a new home -- as soon as I find one.