Shakin' the Family Tree

Following the discovery of the date, place and cause of death of his brother, Urban Orville Williams, I started looking through newspapers to see if I could find Julian Otis and A Virgil Williams.

I started with Julian Otis Williams. I went to newspapers.com and did a fairly broad search for Otis. I knew he was alive in the 1900 census, listed as a printer.

Did not expect to find him dead in Vicksburg, MS in 1910.


Otis Williams, a well known local printer, who has been employed on the Herald as a "sub" for some years past, dropped dead this morning... Vicksburg Evening Post, 17 Jun 1910 at page 1.

As ghastly as those old headlines and articles were in their exacting attention to detail about death, I learned something about Otis.

...He lead (sic) somewhat of a Bohemian life, was generous with his means and liberal beyond his means...The members of the local typographical union who knew him reported him to be a man of many good qualities and possessed of a big heart...

I cannot find Otis' grave, although a couple of other news articles say the family wanted to being his body back to Little Rock.

This article also says he had a wife in Little Rock (never knew that), and then there was this...

...has a brother in the printer's home at Colorado Springs...

Lucien was dead. So was Urban. So that just left Virgil.

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I always wondered that the "A" stood for. When looking for Virgil, I'd always seen historic records that either said A Virgil Williams, or A V Williams.

Since Otis died in 1910, and the brother was referred to in the present tense, I took a gamble that Virgil would appear in the 1910 census in Colorado Springs.

No result for Virgil Williams. So I tried A V Williams.

And there he was. Aubrey V Williams, age 59, divorced. Born in Kentucky. Father born in Kentucky, mother born in Germany. Inmate of the Union Printers Home in Colorado Springs.


That's the last I can find of Virgil. I always understood that one of the brothers died in Denver, but not when. Until today, I thought that brother was Otis.

It has to be Virgil. I can't find death records after 1908 digitized for Colorado, and they didn't start keeping death certificates until 1912. I can't submit a request to get a death certificate unless I can provide a date of death. I guess I'll have to call Colorado and see how many times I can get transferred before someone can give me a work-around.

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Both brothers were mentioned - as were Arkansas mosquitoes - in The Typographical Journal, Volume 11, publ. International Typographical Union., 1897.

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I'm not done yet. I want to find their final resting places. Ditto for brother Lucien.

The journey is good.