William and Elve Waits and family
Mystery solved!!
After posting about Grandpa Will’s obituary yesterday and finding the Pitt reference for Elve, I remembered seeing something with the name Pitt on it. So I dug out my big envelope with all of the original documentation that I got from my Dad and started looking. Sure enough! There was a photocopy of a handwritten note that I assume was transcribed from an obituary? It’s hard to say, but here it is!
Samuel Melvin Pitt
the son of John & Elvie Pitt was borned May 13-1869 in his Grand Father home stead near Ruby Nebr he passed away at his home in Ruby a part of the home stead of his grand Father his age 70 years 10 months 3 days. His Father & Mother were the first white couple married in Seward County married Nov 12 1866. Mr Pitt never married he preferred single life he live with his grand mother for many years and farmed the old home stead for several (photocopy cuts the rest off).
This explains a lot! I kept running into this name on Census forms and he was always either living with a family member or right next door to them!
- The 1880 Census shows William H (35) & Elve (35) living with Melvin S (son-11), Fred (son-4), and Vina (dau-2). My family group sheet shows Fred as the oldest, but I added Melvin S in anyway and just documented it with the census information.
- I also have a photocopy of a photo (shown above) that has all of the Waits kids and their parents. They all look pretty much identical except for the guy on the left, who looks older and has a face that’s more square than long and skinny like the rest of the family. Yet, when you count out the kids and compare that to the family group sheet, there’s one extra. and in my mind, it has to be Samuel Melvin Pitt.
Thanks again to Vicki! We emailed back and forth a few times yesterday. I just saw this morning that she sent an awesome scan of a 1900s photo of William and Elve that I haven’t seen before. Yippee!
If anyone has an original photo of the one posted above, or any other photos of that family, I would love it if you could scan them and send them on to me. It doesn’t come out so well when you scan a photocopy of a photo. Like in Multiplicity, a copy of a copy of a copy just isn’t that sharp. =)
Recent Comments