Calif. Families Hellar Thomas Myrtle Genealogy |
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.
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)