Finally an update!

On April 21st, 2012, I sent Philadelphia, PA a request for a death certificate they had listed in their public records for a female named Bessie Hibbs. According to the marriage certificate of John Ristow's second wife, Beulah DeFrehn, that's where they were married.

I literally had no other option. This was my last hope: to try and see if Bessie had died in Pennsylvania where it was hopefully recorded.

About a month into waiting for a response I gave them all call, and the lady said that it would take between 16 and 18 weeks. FOUR MONTHS! It takes them four months to type a number into a database, print out the record and mail it. They can't be THAT busy. Sure enough though, four months later in mid August I got a response. And guess what? It was the wrong woman. This attempt number five to get her death certificate, and also failure number five.

I hadn't been to the Mormon Family History Center in a long time, so I dropped by to tell my depressing story. The guy there complimented my tenacity and how I wouldn't let anything hold me back. He told me a few stories of how people gave up after two or three tries, so the compliments felt pretty good.

I honestly didn't know what I was doing at the center. I went to tell my story, and that was it. But I stayed. I found a computer, logged into the genealogy sites and started searching for the familiar names: Bessie Hibbs, John Ristow, Charles Hibbs (Bessie's father), so on and so on. The same hits showed when I typed in Bessie's name--but then it clicked. I went through everything that I definitely knew for certain about Bessie Hibbs.:

1. Born in Trenton, NJ.
2. Gave birth to my grandmother Marian.
3. Found a marriage announcement of Bessie and John in the newspaper.
4. Apparently died in a car accident with her unnamed "infant son".
5. ...literally nothing else

It hit me like a burlap sack of bricks: I don't know if the Bessie I've been researching is the right one or not. I got a death certificate of a woman named Bessie Hibbs, but not with the parent's names that I've found. This new Bessie Hibbs could be the right one, it may not be.

Son of a bitch...

But because of my tenacity, I've found another lead. Right now I feel as though THIS is now my last hope, but I'm sure I'll figure something else out if this doesn't work. Here's my idea:

I was looking over the facts that I absolutely knew about Bessie. One included the marriage announcement that in the paper. Check it out. That article actually says that the marriage "took place on Thursday afternoon." That paper is the 24 April 1920 edition of the Trenton Evening Times, which is a Saturday. Two days prior would make it the 22nd, so this Bessie Hibbs married John Ristow on 22 April 1920.

I'm going to send a request to Trenton for the marriage certificate. The marriage certificate has names of both the bride and groom's parents, so if the parents to John Ristow match what we have here currently, I'll have proof of who Bessie's parents were. When I have those names, it'll feel like I'm a step closer to figuring this out.