Calif. Families Hellar Thomas Myrtle Genealogy
 
Aunt Myrtles Death Certificate list her father as Samuel Hellar, who was her half-brother from all the records I could find.
Dad (A. Thomas McBride, Jr.). is listed as the source of information on the death certificate; I went thru his old papers that I have and couldn't find anything on Myrtle. Her name is also misspelled Heller instead of Hellar.

Detective work is a requirement when you do genealogy, so I started looking.

The obvious thing was to find a birth certificate. Unfortunately everything says she was born in San Francisco and all the vital records were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire.

Everything I could find list her father as Thomas Hellar and she was a half-sister of Annie Hellar King. See sources below.

According to genealogy databases, Samuel was never married. Samuel would have been 34 when Myrtle was born, so she could have been an illegitimate child which the Hellar's adopted. I think the odds of it being a family secret which was never passed to our generation are low.

But, it is also unusual that Thomas Hellar had another child at the age of 76.
Records do show that he was remarried.

My records show she was born in San Francisco. I looked for her birth certificate at the Vital Records department in San Francisco and the California Dept. of Public Health; Neither had records from San Francisco prior to 1906 (Earthquake and fire). I still have some boxes of Dad's old documents which I haven't looked at yet. So I have some motivation to dig thru them.

  1. The Heller page at RrootsWeb says Samuel was never married. Today that would not mean he couldn't be her father :-).
  2. The 1910 census shows Thomas (father-in-law) and Myrtle (daughter-in-law) of L.L. King, with whom they were living with Myrtle's half-sister Annie Hellar King.
  3. Samuels obituary in the Roseville Tribune says he was the brother of Myrtle.
  4. Myrtle's obituary says Annie Hellar King was her sister (actually half-sister).

Dad was listed as the informant for the death certificate, but Placer County Vital records say that usually comes from the Funeral Home.
Placer county said they didn't have anything but her death certificate and I should check with the funeral home.
Lambert's Funeral Home first told me they couldn't release any records, even though it was my father listed as the source, because of HIPAA. I went back on a Saturday (persistence is important in genealogy ) and they showed me her file, which was forms Dad filled out consistent with her death certificate.

Placer Co. told me i need to get a from the California Department of Health to change the death certificate, if I could find good evidence to suppor that.

Attached:
  Myrtle death Certificate
  Samuel's Obituary
  1920 Census
  Descendants of Jacob Hellar Descendants (rtf)

Return to the Hellar Page.
last updated 15 Feb 2019