Years ago, as a young mom, I discovered a headstone in our local cemetery that peaked my interest. At the time the headstone was sinking a bit, the writing on it was barely discernable, and it appeared to be the oldest headstone in the Plummer family plot. Add to this fact that the headstone belonged to a 12-year old child that no one in the family could tell me about, only added to the curiosity that would eventually lead me to discover a passion for uncovering the lives of my ancestors and the stories that each one of them could tell.
My search for the story of Angus was in the very early days of my hobby and it was a part-time hobby with \access to census records via dial-up and newspapers were ordered on inter-library loan from the state library. Vital records were in an office open 8:30-4:30 and at the time I worked out of town from 8-5. It was a slow-moving project but my curiosity was peaked and I couldn’t let go.
I started my search in the 1910 census in Forest county. No luck. There was not a single Plummer listed in the 1910 Forest County census. I searched Lee County, Kentucky census records and began to slowly piece together the large Plummer families located there. But still I found no Angus.
I expanded by search to include the counties around Lee county: Owsley, Breathitt, etc., and was excited but dismayed to find even more Plummer family connections but not the ones I was looking for. Eventually I expanded my search in Wisconsin records to include counties surrounding Forest County and there I found Angus, age 9, living in rural Marinette county, in the small lumbering town of Dunbar.
Now that I found the family living in Dunbar, I surmised that Angus has died in Dunbar and went looking for an obituary in the county newspaper at the time, the Peshtigo Times.
Obituary of Angus Plummer, son of Anderson Plummer and Sallie Bowman.
Peshtigo Times. Peshtigo, WI. 1912 DEC 12.
An obituary of Angus was not published in the Crandon newspapers; however his burial is mentioned and points to the fact that his uncle Matt Plummer had chosen to settle in the Town of Crandon by 1912.
This led me to dig deeper in Crandon newspapers and in fact Angus’ burial was noted in the Forest Republican, although the editor was not yet familiar with the Plummer family, instead referring to them as the Palmer family.
Forest Republican. Crandon, Wisconsin. December 13, 1912.