Family Chronicle - Arthur Hoag Project: Part I

In the September/October 2002 issue of Family Chronicle, we featured the Ackerman Case Study. For this project we selected a person whose genealogy had not been done; we conducted the research and explained how we found out about Charles George Gordon Ackerman and his ancestors. When we began, we honestly had no idea where it would lead. As it turns out, we did rather well, largely because we tapped into other people’s lines that had already been researched.

We started a second research project on a person nominated by a reader. The reader assured us that no work had been conducted on the subject. After spending some considerable time on the research, we discovered that, in fact, extensive work had already been undertaken — by the person who had proposed the candidate! Obviously we had nothing worthwhile to publish. However, readers still fondly remember the earlier Ackerman Case Study and a number of you asked if we planned to run another. This feature is the answer.

The candidate we selected was Arthur Edwin Hoag. He married Bertha Moorshead, a great-aunt of mine; they had no children. Although we cannot be certain that no one has researched him, we have not come across anything during our own investigation (although, as with Charles Ackerman, we may have found his ancestors’ line well researched).

What did we know?
What did we know about Arthur Edwin Hoag before we started?

A paragraph in a book about Alfred John Moorshead (1853-1939) (his father-in-law) gives the following:

On June 28, 1911, their daughter Bertha Nellie, was married to Arthur Edwin Hoag, D.D.S., of Carrollton, Illinois. In 1919, Dr and Mrs. Hoag moved to Los Angeles, California, where he practiced dentistry.

A family letter, dated 16 May 1919, includes a paragraph:

Your Aunt Bertha has gone to Cuba, Illinois but only expects to remain there until the fall, when your Uncle Arthur and her will go either to Los Angeles, California, or perhaps up into the cold regions of Alaska.

In a taped interview conducted in 1996, Bertha’s nephew, Thomas Moorshead (my father), mentioned that he had visited his Uncle Arthur and Aunt Bertha in Los Angeles in March 1933 and that they had no children. Arthur is supposed to have died fairly young.

There was one good professional photograph of Arthur in the family photo album (shown above, left). We have a second photograph taken in Los Angeles in 1933 with his wife Bertha.
We had a name, occupation and place of residence in 1911. We did not know his birth or death dates. We do not have the advantage of being able to ask older family members for recollections as none of them who knew him are still alive. This is not a lot of information to start with but it is enough.

The Start of the Search
Part of our basic information is that Arthur Hoag was married on 28 June 1911 and was from Carrollton, Illinois. We do not know where the marriage took place (Bertha was living in St. Louis, Missouri at the time of her marriage but at the time of writing, we have not researched the wedding).

The place to start looking for Arthur Hoag is in the 1910 census. Family Chronicle subscribes to two online services that provide the images and indexes to the US federal censuses: Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest Online (as part of a subscription to the Godfrey Memorial Library — see the Nov/Dec 2004 Family Chronicle issue, page 25).

When we searched for Arthur Hoag in Illinois in the 1910 census, both Ancestry and Heritage Quest offered us three choices. Both listed one of the choices in Carrollton in Greene County. Most of the Ancestry census indexes link directly to the original image but that was not available in this case. We were given all the reference numbers and could have found him but we chose to use the Heritage Quest service as their index linked directly to the image.

The First Hit
The census image showed us Arthur Hoag, single, a boarder, age 30, living at 13 West 6th Street in Carrollton. He worked as a dentist on his OA (Own Account). According to the census, he was born in Illinois, as were his mother and father.

Quickly we moved to the 1900 census. Arthur would have been 20 and there was a good chance he would be living in Illinois (as apparently he was born there) with his parents (or a parent). Ancestry was of no help, as the 1900 census has not been indexed for Illinois. Heritage Quest offered us an Arthur Hoag working as a machinist in Urbana: this was not our Arthur. So, this was our first minor set back.
What about working forwards to 1920? From our limited knowledge we are told that Arthur and Bertha moved to Los Angeles in 1919. The 1920 federal census for California offers us two Arthur Hoags in California but neither is close to being our subject.

So, we decided to check Illinois for 1920. He is there, listed living in Cuba, Fulton County with his wife Bertha, practicing as a dentist. So, the two sources that he moved to California in 1919 appear incorrect. His age is given as 45 (he would be 40 if we believe the 1910 census). It also shows that he was born in Wisconsin, as were his father and mother. A number of facts disagree; could these be two different people? However, it also shows that Bertha, his wife, and both her parents, were born in Wisconsin. We know that Bertha’s father was born in England and her mother in Indiana. So we already know that there are some errors.

We have got the right person but conflicting information; some of it has to be wrong — what can we believe?

We then looked for Arthur Hoag in Wisconsin in 1900. Wisconsin is not indexed by Ancestry. Heritage Quest has Wisconsin indexed but the only Arthur Hoag listed is not ours.

As almost all genealogists know, the 1890 census was nearly completely lost in a fire. Ancestry has produced what they call an 1890 census substitute made up from a variety of sources: we tried this without success.

Working back, we tried the 1880 census for Wisconsin. This is not available on Heritage Quest’s service but is carried by Ancestry. The index is also available, at no cost, on the LDS Church’s www.familysearch.com.

Eureka! We finally find what we have been looking for. Arthur E. Hoag, age one month in Baraboo, Wisconsin. The parents are Edwin M. Hoag, age 28, a merchant, born in New York and both his parents born in the same state. His wife is Stella R., age 22, who was born in New Hampshire; her father was born in New Hampshire and her mother was born in Canada. The birth date is right for the 1910 census but not for 1920. Despite this, it does look like our candidate.

There is still a lot of conflicting information. It is probable that we are dealing with the same person but we need more sources.

WWI Draft Cards
This is a source that has received far less publicity than it deserves. Every male in the US, born between 1872 and 1900, had to register for the WWI draft. This even included those who were not US citizens. The only men in this age range who did not have to register were those already serving in the military. These cards can carry a lot of useful information.

The Family History Library has filmed these records and copies of the film can be ordered through your local Family History Center. They are also available from Grandma Up a Tree (www.grandma upatree.com). Some of these records have recently become available on Ancestry.com’s subscription website. At present, only 19 states are listed on the Ancestry site and even these are not complete.

Fortunately, Illinois is one of the states that is at least partially indexed. We guessed that Arthur was either in Carrollton, Greene County or Cuba, Fulton County at the time of registration.

We found him pretty quickly. The quality of these images is not the greatest but the information is excellent: it confirmed several things.

It gives his birth date: 29 May 1880 (linking him firmly to the 1880 census information). It gives his wife’s name as Bertha (confirming the 1920 census). He is a dentist; his height and build are given as medium. His eyes were brown. His hair color was entered as dark but is crossed out and entered as gray. He was 38 at the time. We even have his signature!

Having confirmed Arthur’s place of birth — Baraboo, Wisconsin — we decided to take another look at the 1900 census using Ancestry’s “best matches” search rather than the exact name. We had a possible location of Baraboo. This search found the family. The name is incorrectly spelled on the census form as Hoage. It lists a sister of Arthur’s as Ethel G., nine years his junior.

There was only one more census to check — that for 1930. We know that Arthur was in Los Angeles in March 1933 (one of the known pieces of information that we started with). We find him almost immediately; the age, his birthplace and that of his parents and all the details for wife Bertha are correct. Arthur is still a dentist. There is little new information here but we are given some confirmation of the correct data.

Widening the Search
Until we had the WWI Draft Card, we were dealing with speculation. We suspected errors in the census but we had nothing concrete. Now we have a date and location of birth but when did Arthur die?

He was alive in 1933 (when he would have been 53) but supposedly died young. Records of people who died in California between 1940 and 1997 can be viewed online (we found Bertha’s date of death: 22 January 1980). We did not find a record of Arthur’s death.

Did he die before 1940, die in another state or was the record missing? A look at the California Vital Records website was not encouraging. If indeed he had died in California, we did not know in which county. According to the website it would take “4-6 months (possibly more)” to get the record. There had to be another way.

Obituaries
There are several sites on the Internet that list obituaries but few of these go back to the 1930s. We did do a search of several lists with no results.
One of my favorite genealogy resources is online newspapers. The original images are online with every word indexed. There are already millions of pages available online, growing by millions each month (one database alone is adding two million new pages per month). The Los Angeles Times is one of the newspapers with a huge collection (1886-1999) which can be searched online. There are a number of ways to access these records. Our subscription to the Godfrey Memorial Library (www.godfrey.org) gives us access to the LA Times archives.

We found no obituary listing for Arthur Hoag. Trying Arthur Edwin Hoag, we did find a death notice from the issue of 19 March 1939 showing his death on the previous day. We thought it strange that there was no obituary so we tried to think laterally and searched under Bertha Hoag, his wife’s name: she would probably be mentioned in any obituary. We found it quickly. The obituary lists him as Arthur E., Hoag. It just shows that you sometimes have to use your imagination when it comes to searching.

Both the death notice and the obituary give the name of the company who handled the funeral. We looked them up on the Internet and found, to our surprise, that they were still in business under the same name. We e-mailed them for confirmation but have not received a reply. Arthur’s cremation at Inglewood Park Cemetery was also mentioned. Their website has a genealogy inquiry section and offers photographs of grave sites for a modest sum. We e-mailed them.

We received a prompt reply from Inglewood Park Cemetery. They confirmed the date of death and the cremation but told us that the remains had been transferred to Forest Lawn cemetery in Glendale. We did not pursue this at this stage. We did now have three confirmations of Arthur’s date of death: he died on 18 March 1939.

Errors in the Census
We have mentioned above the conflicting information in the different censuses. We have numerous instances of errors on the original census documents. Although we have previously found errors in other searches, we were surprised by the number of problems. There is a tendency to blame the indexers when you can’t find someone but in every case the indexes were correct; it was the originals that were wrong.

Most of the errors appear to be the result of lazy enumeration but we are puzzled by the information on where Arthur’s mother, Stella, was born. In 1880 and 1900 it is New Hampshire, 1910 it is Illinois, in 1920 it is Wisconsin and in 1930 it is Vermont.

Which of the two subscription services to the census images was the best — Ancestry or Heritage Quest? Neither of them is complete. Frankly, we would have taken far longer in conducting our research without access to both.

Confirmation
We had already decided that a six- months’ wait for a death certificate from California was not worth it as we had three independent sources of his date of death. Strictly speaking, we should have ordered this and we may decide to do so later. It should give us the cause of death, something that we don’t know.

We did however order a copy of his birth certificate from the Sate of Wisconsin. We found the information on how to order this online easily. We sent them the $12 fee on 23 September but as of mid-November, when this article was being written, we had not received anything.

More Searching
We now have enough information to start widening the search. We know his birth date, marriage and death dates.

We next turned to Google to see if there was anything. We tried a number of combinations and, once again, we were lucky. We found a biography in a book published in 1905.

This entry was found on the Greene County Genealogical and Historical Society website. We are indebted to Shirley A. Aleguas of Waverly for putting these biographies online and for giving us permission to include the item shown in the box at the right.

The bio confirms the birth date and gives us useful information about his education. Arthur’s mother said to be “a native of” Iowa (though this is not the same as “born in”) adding further confusion to where she was born.

We had been very lucky so far with finding information online, but this did not extend to his education. We discovered that the Dental School at Northwestern University, where Arthur studied, had closed a few years ago. This line of research could wait for the future if we wished to pursue it.

Edwin M. Hoag
From the 1880 census, confirmed by Arthur’s bio, we learn that his father and mother are Edwin M. and Stella R. Hoag. Ed, Arthur’s father (as we later learned that he was called) is listed as a merchant.

Baraboo is in Sauk County, Wisconsin. We found ourselves lucky yet again because they boast the active Sauk County Historical Society with a splendid website. We came across this when searching in Google using “Baraboo Hoag”. They have the Baraboo City Directory for 1895-6 which can be searched online and we find Ed Hoag as a proprietor of: stanley and hoag, (William Stanley and Edwin M. Hoag), dry goods, carpets, groceries, boots and shoes, 119, 123 Third Ave. A separate listing gives Ed Hoag’s home address as 120 Seventh Street.

In a different section of this excellent website, we found listings of photographs available — two were listed for Ed and one for Stella. The society will also conduct research for $15 an hour. We immediately contacted them and authorized two hours of research and ordered the three photographs. The photographic archives appear to be extensive and we asked if a photograph of the Stanley and Hoag store was available but it does not appear to be in their collection.

Further searching on the Internet using “Sauk Cemetery Hoag” yielded a wealth of information. Walnut Hill Cemetery, Baraboo, is the resting place of several members from three generations of the Hoag family. All of them are interred in the North Division, SW Quarter. We have birth dates and locations, the dates of death and even relationships.

Hoag, Stella P., b. 1857, Lebanon, NH, d. 1928, s/w Embree E. Hoag,
S/W in this case means “shares with”. Presumably, Infant Hoag was a brother of Arthur who had died shortly after birth.

We are indebted to Kathy Waddell for submitting these names and to Interment.com for operating this great website.
Very quickly we have found three generations of Hoags on the male line with rough dates and even where they were born.

Family Trees
We now had enough information to see if anyone had researched any part of this line. We started with Ancestry World Tree. There were 82 Arthur Hoags listed — two of them appear exactly right — the middle initial is E and the parents are listed as Edwin Monroe and Stella (Partridge) Hoag. The birth dates are exactly right. We even have information of an older brother with no dates, possibly the infant interred at Walnut Hill.

The only problem is that Arthur’s grandfather’s name is shown as Emery: close to the Embree in the burial records but more than simply a spelling mistake. Emery’s father is shown as David Hoag and his mother as Elizabeth Earle. No dates or other information.

We tried to contact the submitter of this pedigree to ask if they had any confirmation but have not received a response; they of course have no obligation to help us even if they did get our request.

There was a second family tree. This is similar to the first for a few generations but then traces the male line back to John Hoag Sr born in England or Wales in 1628! We are even given details of the ship that John sailed on to reach the New World (the James).

Here we have to be very careful. This line may be perfectly legitimate and properly researched but we have no corroborating evidence of any kind.

There is a tempting snippet of information that this ancestral family may be correct. One of the supposed ancestors, Jonathon Hoag, born 28 October 1671 in Newbury, Massachusetts married Ebenezer (Eben) Emery (it appears that Ebenezer was a woman’s name at some time!). Of course, Emery was Arthur’s grandfather’s name and it is certainly not a common name. The combination of Emery and Hoag is not a unique name — the Emery appears to be a family name that has found its way into several branches of the Hoag family. This name connection is a very tempting clue but certainly not conclusive.

More research
We were able to track Ed and his father Emery Hoag back through the census — we knew where they lived so this was not difficult. In the 1870 census, Ed, who is shown as 18, is living with his parents in Baraboo. In 1860, Emery, age 52, is working as a merchant in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin while wife Elmira (Almira) is still in Peru, Clinton County, New York with young Ed. We can speculate that Emery has gone ahead to establish the family in the west. In 1850, Embree and Almira are both in Peru.

At this stage, we decided we needed to check out the records for which we had no confirmation. We hired a researcher in Salt Lake City to look for evidence of Emery’s ancestors. We'll update you with our findings in the near future.

Halvor Moorshead is Publisher of Family Chronicle magazine.

This article originally appeared in the February 2005 issue of Family Chronicle