This is where it all began for me.
It was August of 2005, and I was visiting with some family friends in Payson, Utah. They were having a family meeting and so I resorted to entertaining myself on the internet. Maybe it is a reflection of how bored I was that I resorted to family history, but I am glad that I did.
As I was googling names of ancestors that I knew, I found a Web site with a database of death certificates for New York City, starting in about the 1870s. Intrigued, I explored it and was able to find the death certificate of Daniel Dean Valentine.
This was important because it gave us a specific birth and death date, where, up until now, we only had rough estimate of years. It gave us his residence, information on his cause of death and where he was buried.
Notably, under the spot for his parents, it is unlisted, "unknown". I passed over that a few times, but then realized that elsewhere on the document his wife was involved in filling out the certificate. Wouldn't she know who his parents were? It could be possible it was an omission on the part of the doctor--but, the fact that his parents birthplace was noted but not their names suggests to me that it maybe wasn't just the doctor passing over it.
At any rate, this does give us some clues to explore.
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