Genealogy Bank

I am now in love with the Genealogy Bank site! For over 20 years my family and I have been looking for my great-great grandfather with no luck. At one point someone was even hired to try to locate him. We were told nothing could be found. After 5 minutes of searching for him in the newspaper archives at Genealogy Bank I was able to find his obituary. He died less than a month before his daughter was married in New York. Today seems the perfect day to find this as it is the anniversary of her marriage. I guess it is fitting to type up a little bio about him.

Samuel Miles Shick(s), was born in March of 1882 in Delaware to Daniel Shicks and his wife Emma R (Emaline) Shafer. Both Daniel and Emma were born in Pennsylvania. They had five children that I know of: Jemima (Mima), born about 1876 in Pennsylvania, she married Mert Warren in 1895, Lincoln, DE, moved to Hamilton, NJ; Frank M., all I know about him is he was born in PA and was alive when his mother died in 1923; Samuel Miles; George W., born 10 May 1884 in DE, died 23 September 1890; and William Baker, born about 1885, married as her second husband, Mary Bennett-Moore in 1930, Milford, DE, in 1925 he was living in Camden, NJ but died in DE in 1944, Smyrna, DE.

Samuel married Edna Rose Deputy, daughter of Benjamin Burton Deputy and Annie Meriah Warren. Their license was filed in Milford in May of 1905. In December of that year my great-grandmother, Mary Burton Shicks, was born.

The couple was listed together in the 1910 census but living with his mother in 1910 was Samuel as well so they may have separated around that time. Samuel would end up living in Trenton, NJ by 1918 when he had a WWI draft card filed. That was around the time Mary last saw him and the only time she ever remembered him. Her mother took her to Trenton on the train where Mary remembered seeing the bridge sign "Trenton Makes the World Takes."

According to an article in the Trenton Evening Times from 3 May 1919 Samuel was arrested as a material witness when the woman who ran the boarding house he was staying at and a pawnbroker were arrested for selling a firearm to a minor. He was still a resident of her boarding house in the 1920 census.

The Trenton Evening Times of 24 August 1925 has an obituary posted for Samuel. He was still living at the boarding house and had apparently been at the shore the night before. It was stated that he returned home around 9pm the night before, ate a big meal and retired for the evening. Jennie Harris, the boarding house owner, said the next morning she heard a thud from above but did not get up to investigate. Upon arising she found him dead on the floor of his room. The coroner said he died of apoplexy. They were notifying his brother William of Camden of his death and were awaiting instructions on what he wanted to do. Samuel was only 44 years old. Nothing else could be found. My next trip will be to obtain his death record to locate where he was buried.