Mother and Daughter in Green-Wood Cemetery

To round out this mini-series about Green-Wood Cemetery, I have the answers to two more mysteries to share.  The first is the identity of the person buried under the stone reading "Mother".  The second is the identity of Virginia M. Williams, the final family member who is listed as buried in this lot, that I hadn't previously been able to identify.  These answers are connected - but not one and the same.

 

When I first did research on this family lot, I associated the "Mother" marker with Helen G. Williams, whose burial record states she is in the right rear corner, which matches the location of that marker.  As I revisited all of this information recently, I began to question that association.  Helen Garcia married Henry "Harry" C. Williams Jr. on 12 Dec 1916.  They had each been married before, and each had a child living from their previous marriage.  Searching for more details, I couldn't find any evidence that Helen and Harry had children together.  They are listed in the 1920 and 1930 US Census, neither time with any children living with them.  While their marriage certificate lists their ages in 1916 as 30 and 46, and the 1920 Census lists their ages as 34 and 50, I am certain that she was a decade older (making those either mistakes or deliberate attempts to come across as younger).

It seemed strange to me that Helen would be designated as "Mother" in the Williams family lot, if she didn't have a child with Harry Williams.  Then again, there weren't any other good contenders for who was buried under that marker... Henry C. Williams Sr.'s two wives - Mary Harrison, who had children with him, and Mary Sellers, who raised those children - both have markers of their own.  Alice Corbett Williams, another mother, also has her own marker.  I wondered if Sarah Addison Williams might have been buried in this lot with the "Mother" marker before she was moved to another lot which her children purchased (as I recently detailed in this post).  But if that was the case, why would her "Mother" marker have been left behind?

I was left, for a time, with a big question mark next to the designation of the "Mother" marker belonging to Helen G. Williams.

I then turned to the final mystery in the lot - that of Virginia M. Williams.  Who was she, and where did she fit in the family tree?  She was buried in August 1977, which complicated the search since Green-Wood doesn't make the full scans of their burial records available for that decade yet.  I tried searches for an obituary or any other clues on who she was, and came across a listing for her in the Social Security Death Index, which gives her birthdate as 5 July 1895, and also gives her SSN.  Using that, I filed a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request for more details - the first time I've done that.  And it paid off!  Her Social Security application, filed in 1943, shows that she was born Virginia Mary Garcia, the daughter of Manuel Garcia and Helen Garcia (which was both her maiden name and her first married name).  By 1943, Virginia was going by the name Virginia Mary Williams.

With Virginia Williams buried in the same family lot (without any marker of her own, nor any indication from my research that she had children), it makes sense after all that Helen Garcia Williams was buried under the "Mother" marker.

I searched for more information about Virginia's life, and found that she married a Peter Lafroscia on 19 Feb 1916.  She was 20 and he was 24.  This is clear evidence that Helen Garcia was 40 at the time of her marriage to Harry Williams later that same year, and not 30.  

In the 1930 Census, Virginia and Peter were living separately - I have been unable to find Virginia's listing in that census (under any of her possible last names), but Peter was listed as a brother-in-law living with Charles and Teresa Anastasio.  He's marked as married in that census.  Both Virginia and Peter appear in the 1940 Census (Peter still living with the Anastasios), both marked there as divorced.  She was using the last name of Williams at that point, and apparently for the remainder of her life.