While researching a family line, I became a little bogged down in the research. I had a family line that I was following within New Zealand and I would include the certificate numbers so that I know I have the right dates.
This particular family member had the name of John Cross with no middle name and the only date I had was the marriage to his wife Inez Fuge in 1915. At the time I didn’t have the name of his parents or when he was born, or even his death.
His wife Inez had passed away in 1979 leaving a will listing the name of her children and was a widow. The New Zealand Births Deaths and Marriages had 8 John Cross’ between 1926 and 1979 of various ages. The New Zealand National Archives had several probate records with John Cross and I had to read the wills to eliminate all of them as the names of the children didn’t match. The reason for 1926 was when his last child was born so I had some dates. I had no birth or death date for him yet.
Paperspast wasn’t helping too much as there were plenty of people with the same name. I decided to use Ancestry to see if I could search through the electoral roll in New Zealand for Inez Cross. She had an unusual name and would be easy to trace. I thought I would start with 1954 and found she was a widow, 1941 and 1938 both listed her as the same. The next one in 1935 listed him as alive and occupation Butcher.
I jumped onto the death records and ended up with two deaths after I changed the search queries. Then I went back to Ancestry wit the marriage date and tried one of the death dates and the record came up with the cemetery details. The funny thing was his age and the name of his parents were included with the cemetery records including his wife’s maiden name. Sometimes you can get real lucky if you know where to look. John was a little older than I had expected him to be when he passed away, but I got there in the end.
Links
Paperspast
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
New Zealand National Archives
https://www.archives.govt.nz/
New Zealand Births Deaths and Marriages
https://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/
