Who Do I Think I Am Thursday: How I Made My Father Light Up Like a Christmas Tree

My father had a great passion for life-long learning. There is a scripture, Doctrine and Covenants 130:19 which reads,

And if a person gains more ^aknowledge and intelligence in this life through his ^bdiligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the ^cadvantage in the world to come. (http://lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/130.19?lang=eng)

It could almost read, "...if a person gains more knowledge...like Don Mitchell"

There are two times in my adult life that I remember making my father beam. Once, after reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, he asked me how the Fibonacci Sequence applied to music and I knew the answer. (That's a story for another post).

The other time was shortly after I had bought my first laptop. He had brought a diskette (remember those?) to my house and let me transfer GEDCOM files into PAF. He asked me if I could find immigration records for his grandparents who had come through Ellis Island.

The family in question were my great-grandparents, William Richard Mitchell and Alice Mary Ann Hudson. According to the family legend, William and Alice had 2 sons born in England, 1 born on the passage over, and 2 born in Detroit. The shipboard delivery of my great uncle George would certainly help narrow down their dates of passage.

I rolled up my sleeves and clicked away at www.ellisisland.org. I started with a search for "William Richard Mitchell" and guess what I got? Bupkiss. So I broadened my search and looked for just "Mitchell" Now I got 12,195 hits. Too many to wade through.

Mitchell, W=1003 hits....Hmm...many, many men traveling, not many women.
Mitchell, Alice=68...that's doable. Eliminate the ones that are too old or too young. Limit it to women were born in 1868 and who traveled around 1892, when Uncle George was born. There was only one.

We had found her. Alice Mitchell, age 25, traveling in 1893 aboard the ship Campania. I looked at Dad; he looked at me. He grinned.

Now who was traveling with her? The website did not yet have images of the manifest. So I was going to have to search for the family members one by one.

New Search...Oh look...an advanced search page. Where was that before?

So we searched for people with the last name Mitchell traveling in 1893 on Campania.

Wm. Mitchell age 25
Willie Mitchell age 4
Arthur Mitchell age 3 and
George Mitchell age 0. (Family Myth busted. Uncle George was born 5 December 1892. The ship arrived in New York on 24 June 1893. He was tiny, to be sure, but definitely 6 months post-natal.)

We had found them all. Robert Langdon had nothing on us. Dad's eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. That is the look I would give anything to see again.

PS--Months later when an image of the original manifest was available online. I was amazed that anyone was able to accurately transcribe that penmanship. But guess who was traveling with the Mitchells--Mary Hudson-age 70. Alice's mother or grandmother? That's a story for another post.