Exploring History Through Genealogy

The Intriguing Life of Julia Metzgar

When working on the book I am writing, I came across a mystery lady. I was writing up the lives of the children of Lydia Ann Lee (1852-1899); the last child she had was the only one with her second husband, John C. Metzger (1838-1919): Julia Metzger. I knew two things about her: From her dad's obituary I knew she was married to Henry C. Tanner by 1919. From her sister, Jennie Berry Metzger's, obituary, I knew that she had married a man named Rambo and they were living in Fairport, New York in 1955. I also knew from a birth index, that she was born on the 4th of August, 1890 in Adams Township, Ohio. That was all I could find on her back when I first looked at her a couple of years ago. Today I was determined to find out who she was and what she had done with her life.

The first thing I found was a social security claim in the index for a Julia Rambo born on the 4th of August 1890 and died on the 4th of November 1964. Unfortunately it didn't list her parents or where she was born and died. However, I was sure that this was her and set out to find more. I looked in the newspapers searching for her obituary, but had no luck. So I decided to add what I had found to the LDS database at www.familysearch.org. I discovered a possible merger for her dad and I clicked on it to see if it was truly the same person. Interestingly it was, but it listed another daughter, Marion L. Metzger. I was intrigued.

On both John and Lydia Metger's obituaries it states that they only had one daughter together: Julia. So who is this Marion? Opening up the sources, I discovered a marriage record for Marion L. Metzger and Charles H. Tanner. Her age matched Julia's and so did her parent's names. She listed her birthplace as New York, which wasn't possible, as Julia had been born in Ohio. So I looked at the birth index for Ohio and found other child listed for John and Lydia Metzger, nor did I find a Marion L. Metzger born in Ohio. To cover my bases, I looked in New York for a birth for her and found none. So, I came to the conclusion that Julia had changed her name to Marion when she went to Michigan, I would love to know why! While trying to find out what happened between them, I discovered that Charles remarried in October 1912 and looking through newspapers, I discovered Julia and Charles divorced the prior August.

I don't know what happened to her for the next couple of years, but we find Julia in Marion County, Indiana getting married to Jay Rambo (1893-1974) on the 22nd of September, 1914. They then moved to Perry, New York by 1920 and moved once again to Fairport, New York in 1920. They remained in Fairport the rest of their lives. Now, I knew they were in Fairport from Jennie Berry Metzger's obituary in 1955. So I started looking through the newspaper, Democratic Chronicle, based out of Rochester. The first thing I found was Jay's obituary which stated his wife, Julia (Janet) was still alive. This gave me two important bits of information. First, she had changed her name, again! This is confirmed by the marriage index record which is under the name Janet Metzger. The other important news, was that the social security claim I had found earlier was for the wrong person, who was consequently born on the same day. This is why it is always good to verify your sources and have at least two of them for every bit of information when possible. Armed with the news that she was still alive in 1974, I expanded my search for her in the newspaper and found a death notice for her in November 1982. She had died on the 9th.

From there, it was filling in the details, such as finding census records and city directories to discover their occupations. For example, when she married Charles, she had been a waitress at a hotel. Charles had been a baker for a biscuit company, while Jay had been a barber with his own shop. They never had any children that I could discover, but she and Jay had a foster son, Carl J. Suhr (1906-1969) who lived with them in 1930. We know their relationship due to Carl's obituary.

I had a lot of fun researching Julia, aka Marion, aka Janet. I love mysteries and playing detective. There is still so much to learn about her, but that is for another time.