When I first started doing my genealogy I was focused only on the direct line ancestors, not being so concerned with the siblings that were found. There are still many people who have this same approach but I have found not only do adding the siblings insure that you are continuing down the correct line, they also can provide family information that you may not be able to find from your direct line ancestor.
Families would move in mass from area to area moving in and out of each others homes and splitting property between parents and siblings. Researching the spouses and children of these Aunts and Uncles can also help turn up interesting clues. The Siffrinn side of my father’s family is very short on information and very difficult to find. From Census records I can determine that they lived from 1900 on in the Mckean County Pennsylvania but not before that period. The Census tells me that they immigrated to the States some time in 1882.
I took another look at the obituary for my great grandfather Peter Lewis Siffrinn. It mentions that his sister was still living in Florida and was married to Clayton L Mix, I just didn’t know what her first name was. I have researched Clayton and found very little information on him, but I thought I would give it another try. I took a look at Clayton’s siblings and noticed that there was information on his sister Blanch in a family tree on ancestry. I went to the Census and looked for Blanch and her husband. This turned up Clayton living with them in 1910 in Ohio.
Now I knew that Clayton wasn’t married to Peter’s sister until after 1910. This would make Clayton about 38 years old in 1910. I did another search on ancestry and noticed that in the World Connect trees there was a Clayton married to a Gussie Siffrim. I went back to my data base for Peter’s siblings and looked again. My first assumption was that Gussie was a nickname for Gertrude until I noticed that Peter had a sister, Augusta.
The nice thing about her name being Augusta Mix is that there are very few of them out there. After another search on Ancestry I found Augusta and Clayton had taken a trip to Mexico and had arrived in New Orleans on their return trip in 1934. Included on the passenger information was their current address in Florida and the birth year and locations for each. Further searches would produce information on the deaths of both Clayton and Augusta in the Daytona, Florida. I was looking on the wrong end of the state of Pennsylvania. Augusta was born in Philadelphia in 1891, which now explains why I couldn’t find the naturalization papers for the family in the counties I had been searching.