Finding Information When All You Have is a Name

The only information that was found associated with the photograph below is the name of the young lady, Jessie Boor.

When the name “Jessie Boor” is entered into the database Heritage Quest, a database available through the Ohio Web Library, only one hit is retrieved. Jessie Boor is age 3 in the 1880 U.S. Census, the daughter of Samuel and Mary Boor of Scott Township, Sandusky County, Ohio. 

In the advanced search feature of the Hayes Obituary Index, a search for the maiden name Boor, yields 5 names, two which may be the young lady in the photograph. Jessie Sherrad died on July 14, 1939, the wife of Harry Sherrad, in Helena, Ohio. A Jessie Sherrard is also listed with the same death date. The variation in the spelling of the last name is not unusual in the 1930’s, and Jessie’s age lines up exactly with the census information, that Jessie Boor Sherrad/Sherrard was born about 1876 or 1877. 

Further clues are obtained by checking the database WorldConnect, one of the projects found at Rootsweb. Jessie Boor comes up with several “hits.” One is for a Jessie B. Boor, who was born on November 23, 1876 to Samuel Boor and Mary Ellen Snyder. Her spouse is Harry T. Sherrard, and her date of death is given as July 14, 1939. The cemetery where she was buried is Metzgar Cemetery in Scott Township, Sandusky County, Ohio, near Helena, Ohio. The children of Jessie and Harry are also listed: Sylvia, Sydney, and David.

The young lady in our photograph is most likely the future Mrs. Harry T. Sherrard, who lived and died in Sandusky County, Ohio. How the Archives Research Center of the Sandusky Library obtained the photograph remains a mystery, although a good guess would be that it was in a box of donations from an extended family member.

When doing family history research and you have a name with no information given, try entering that name in genealogical databases. You may find out that you can learn a lot about that individual.