Genealogy facts seems to come in unexpected bunches. For years you try to break a brick wall in your research and suddenly the wall breaks and a flood of new information comes your way.

One brick wall involved Ruth Allingham Greer, my great great grandmother. The first record we have is her marriage to Matthew Greer in 1854 in Glencar, Co Leitrim, Ireland.

From that marriage record, we thought she was probably born around 1835, give or take a few years. We also found records of several births to this couple in Sligo.

On Ancestry I found a New York passenger list which indicated that she emigrated to New York City with her 3 youngest children in 1883. The family story was she died of cancer within a few years. But there was no documentation. So there my brick wall stood for several years.

I found a few other records which could have been her but really they were little more than a name match. Finally I found an abstract of her death certificate on family search.

I had found a grave in Green-Wood Cemetery (Brooklyn, New York) several years before using their burial search. But I discarded that as a possible match for 2 reasons.

One, the Green-Wood information indicated Ruth Greer was 32 when buried in 1887. This would mean she was born around 1855 which clearly would be inconsistent with the marriage and births that I knew of.

Second, there is a Letitia Greer in the same grave who died at 24 years of age in 1891 and was unmarried.. Ruth Allingham Greer did have a daughter named Letitia but this seemed unlikely to be her. I believed Letitia had married a Mr. Collins but this was based just on family stories. Family stories can sometimes be helpful but can prove to be misleading. This Letitia seemed to have been born around the time of my Ruth Allingham Greer’s daughter’s birth but seemed unlikely to be the daughter of the buried Ruth. (If you haven’t done the math yet, if we assume ages and dates from Green-Wood are correct this Letitia was born around the time Ruth was 12.)

There was also a Thomas Greer in the grave and that didn’t sway my opinion one way or the other as he could be a child I did not know about or some other relation.

So it was the death information on Ruth Allingham Greer that I found on family search that really got me started again. I found other information at the same time which supported the case. Most importantly I found death abstracts on Leticia and Thomas.

I believe this information was new to the site. I had done similar searches previously and found nothing helpful. So there seem to be 2 lessons here –

• Don’t give up. If you can’t find something online, it could very well be there when you try again months or years later.
• If you have time, consider being a volunteer indexer for family search. That time you spend indexing might help another genealogist or even yourself. In short, it helps all of us.

The death cert abstracts all indicated burials in Green-Wood and dates matched with the Green-Wood information on that grave. Furthermore Thomas Greer’s information showed he was likely the son of Ruth Allingham Greer. And I found a marriage record of another daughter who married Mr. Collins suggesting there may have been a bit of a mix-up in my family story.

Armed with my new information, I asked the genealogist at Green-Wood Cemetery to recheck the age on the buried Ruth Greer. The reply was that 32 was correct and included a copy of the interment slip which clearly showed 32. It also showed an address which matched the the address on the abstract. This further indicated I was looking in the right place.

I had visited the cemetery several years ago but was unable to locate this grave. This did not bother me too much as at the time I though the grave unlikely to the the grave of the Ruth Allingham Greer of my family. But now that I was almost certain this grave was resting place of my Ruth Allingham Greer, I was ready for another look.

Again it was Green-wood genealogy to the rescue. The genealogist sent me a drawing of the public lot containing the grave which clearly showed where the grave was and that there was a stone on it. We managed to locate some of the surrounding stones but had no luck at all looking for the Greer stone.

Then my wife spotted a bit of a stone sticking out of the ground. We (mostly she) scooped away as much loose dirt as we could. And we saw enough to convince us that this was likely the stone we wanted.

Once again it was Green-Wood genealogy to the rescue. (Are you detecting a theme here?) When I told the genealogist what I had found, she requested that the stone be raised and reset. I visited the stone and they did a really nice job.

So thanks to Green-Wood genealogy (and of course those who raised the stone) and family search (and those volunteer indexers) for helping me in solving this. I have found both organizations are so helpful that I do what I can to support them.

So I had been misled by one errant piece of information. It looks like someone made a mistake on the internment record in 1887. But after finding more information, I believe the evidence is convincing that I have found the grave of Ruth Allingham Greer.

One of the fun things about genealogy is that you never run out of questions. Once you solve one then others suggest themselves. The neverending hobby.

Now I would like to learn more about Ruth Allingham Greer’s parents. Then there are more details about the other Allinghams and Greers. Then there are those other branches of my family.