Yesterday and today I received a deluge of information—Dale said he never expected to be married to someone who was excited about getting death certificates in the mail.
Thursday’s news cleared up a mystery in the Sprong family. Grandpa (Aaron, Cynthia’s dad) had a little brother who died at the age of 2. Grandpa never knew exactly why he died, and his mother wouldn’t talk about it—every time he asked her, she would just cry and say that he ate too much watermelon. That wasn’t very enlightening, so I finally got off my behind and wrote to the county for his death certificate; it arrived yesterday. The cause of death was “colitis”, which Mom says is basically inflammation of the colon or intestines. It’s usually accompanied by diarrhea, and since the death certificate says he was ill for 12 days prior to death, he probably got too dehydrated to survive. It was 1913 when he died, so the availability of IVs or other mechanisms to treat a 2-yr-old boy was nil or close to it. Mom and I found it interesting to finally know a little more about what happened to him. His name was Roy Cecil Sprong.
This afternoon’s mail brought eight death certificates from Ohio for me to peruse. Some were a little sad, others confirmed information I’d gotten from other, less formal, sources. I did have one big coup in that I got some new information to follow up on regarding my great-great-grandfather Charles John McCullough (Kitty Lou’s grandfather). For some reason (I haven’t checked my sources yet), I’d had him as a Charles McCullough Jr. But his death certificate does not have a Jr. and furthermore lists his father’s name as William McCullough—born in Ireland (both pcs of info about father new to me). It also gives Charles’ birth place as West Virginia; I’ve seen it in census schedules as both W. Va. and Pennsylvania, so this is just another piece of info to add to the search. Finally, a great piece of information is Charles McCullough’s mother’s name—the only thing I “knew” about her was that she might have been born in Pennsylvania, but I had no name for her. This certificate gives her name as Elnora Cameron, birth place West Virginia. Those are some great leads to research.
Unfortunately, I also obtained official confirmation that Kitty Lou’s mother, Sadie Kenefick McCullough, had “carcinoma of left breast”, and Sadie’s aunt Honora Dohoney also had “mammary carcinoma”. So do those breast exams, ladies!
Posted by elizabeth at August 29, 2003 10:01 PMI called my mom and gave her this latest bit of info. She said the doctor would never say what was the matter with her mom. She did say that she had a mastectomy and underwent 5 months of very painful treatment before her death. Mom also said that she was present at her mom's passing and when she died Aunt Hannah, a registered nurse, said she had stomach cancer because she expelled white fluidy stuff from her mouth. Also, Honora Dohoney died before mother was born, but she told me that she was arrested once for throwing stones at her grandmother's house. Evidently she was angry with her.
Posted by: Auntie Rita on August 30, 2003 09:00 AM