Frank W. Abbot born Mar 4, 1851 in New York City, New York, married Helen A. Shackford Nov 16, 1881in St Louis, Missouri. He was the son of F. Abbot and Mary Carrigan. When did he die and when where the children Edward H. and Charles S. born?
Today, almost eleven years later we received a response from Linda, a fellow genealogy researcher. While we're researching the SHACKFORD family line, this person was researching the Abbot family and found our posting!
While her reply didn't include Frank's death date, she had records regarding the birth and death dates of two of his sons, had run across a newspaper article regarding the probate of his father's will which indicated that Frank had died before his father. Also she shared a link to a biographical sketch for Frank.
We immediately sent her a thank you reply telling her we're currently researching a different Shackford (Jeremiah) but will research more about Helen next and will share our outcomes with her. Also just to be sure we don't lose the information she has shared, we created a fact for both Helen and Frank called OTHER RESEARCHERS and added a source using a standard format we've called ancestry message boards. The research notes posted by Linda to that board are now added in the detailed text to that source so we will always see them when we go back to researching Helen A Shackford and her family.
Today's e-mail reminds us of the importance of posting requests on message boards. Even if it takes almost eleven years to get a response to your posting, you may learn more about that ancestor and will also find another genealogy researcher with whom you can collaborate on further research!
SOURCES:
XXXXX Linda, "Frank W. Abot b 1851 m. Helen A Shackford 1881, St Louis, MO," , ancestry message boards, 11 February 2015 (http://boards.ancestry.com : accessed 11 February 2015).