Cheesy Grits: Valeria's Death Certificate leads us to Charleston

Every now and then, we family historians hit what feels like the "mother lode" of information. After finding only small hints or, worse, nothing at all, a document appears that clears the path for years of future work.



The arrival of Valeria Wilcoxson's death certificate from the New York City Municipal Archives was one of those "mother lode" moments. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you genealogical richness:

Valeria Howard Ralston Wilcoxson's death certificate

I was in too much of a hurry to linger over the details of Valeria's life in Queens: I rushed straight to her birthplace info and the names of her parents. She was born in 1876 in Charleston, South Carolina to Robert and Rebecca Thorne Howard, who were themselves South Carolina born.

Finally at least the corner of the veil over Granddad George's South Carolina origins had been lifted: Charleston was the place we should focus on.

And what did Jane and I know about Charleston? Um...well...we had stopped there after we came through Savannah, but by then a serious cold front was beating us into submission. Yes, there were bluebird skies, but the temperatures were barely above freezing and a stiff north-westerly breeze was whipping up serious whitecaps on Charleston Harbor. I remember seeing a motorboat ("stinkpot" in certain quarters) trying to go upwind and just barely making headway. Our son, toddler Jake, had come down with a cold in Savannah and I was starting to get that feeling where you know you're going to feel worse before you feel better again. On the other hand, the wisteria had started to blossom, and Charleston's wisteria are indeed spectacular.

Toddler Jake astride a cannon at the Battery in Charleston,
with his dad fighting against the cold and a cold.
We.Had.No.Idea.

Although Charleston is now rightly known for its wonderful restaurants, when we visited, Sean Brock was still in junior high school somewhere in the Appalachians. I have no idea where in Charleston we ate, or what we ate. I do know that we had not yet heard of shrimp and grits.

After one night in the Days Inn on Meeting Street, we headed northeast to the north end of Myrtle Beach, where some friends had lent us a beach house for a few days. I spent those few days miserable and huddled under blankets, regretting the time I had spent hanging around a snotty-nosed toddler.

The thought that we might ever return to Charleston with a completely different agenda never occurred to either of us.