George Washington West

PROOF CLASS: FATHER = DIRECT (4 Sep 2026) - the 1880 census states him SON of the head. MOTHER = ARGUMENT (Owen, 7 Sep 2026) - 1880 records his mother's birthplace 'Mo', matching the wife Jane A.; 1900/1910/1930 agree. Register K500. Audited 27 Jul 2026. PARENTS NOT EVIDENCED - recorded so nobody re-hunts this document. Death certificate, Harris Co., 27 Jan 1938, file 2753, image 40394_b062141-00252 (Texas, U.S., Death Certificates, 1903-1982 (Ancestry coll. 2272)): fields 13-16 ALL READ 'No record'. His wife Bessie was the informant and could not name his parents. So the link to Wilbur Dennis West is NOT evidenced here. BUT field 12 gives his birthplace as KANSAS, which independently corroborates the Wilbur-to-Kansas-Territory account; graded LIKELY on geography, not on a named parent. --- Audited 27 Jul 2026 - post-1850 spine, Phase 2 grading (ancestry/post-1850-plan.md). Parents were already attached here; this note records the record that EVIDENCES them, and ProofFather/ProofMother have been set to Proven. 1880 U.S. Census, WALKER, ANDERSON CO., KANSAS, dwelling 65 (Ancestry coll. 6742 rec. 34609198; roll 372 p. 218d ED 022). Household: W. D. West 48 Self (Head), b. NEW YORK - Jane A. West 41 Wife, b. Missouri - Lizzie 16 Dau - GEORGE WEST 13 SON - Elmer 7 - Edword 5 - Claude 2 - Infant 10/12. Matches the attached parents Wilbur Dennis West and Jane Ann Smith. WIDER CORROBORATION: the father's birthplace NEW YORK is consistent with the Erie County, N.Y. West family worked out in west-branch-research.md - an independent tie between the Kansas household and the Erie Co. estate. --- MOTHER HALF GRADED 7 Sep 2026 (Owen). Register K500. COLUMNS READ ON THE IMAGE, image 4241239-00442, which the 27 Jul entry above calls read and did not finish. * THE DECIDING COLUMN, AND IT HAD NEVER BEEN SAMPLED. * On that same 1880 page GEORGE'S OWN entry carries 'Place of Birth of the Mother of this person' = 'Mo' and 'of the Father' = 'N.Y.'. The head W. D. West is b. NEW YORK and the wife Jane A., 41, is b. MISSOURI, so the child's two parent-nativity cells point at the two adults separately - two columns a careless hand would not have coordinated. Read in one frame spanning name through nativity so the row mapping could not splice (memory: tabular-image-row-alignment). WHY ARGUMENT AND NOT DIRECT: the head of this household is the FATHER, so the relation column's 'Son' states PATERNITY. No record in hand NAMES his mother. The mother half is reached by correlating the nativity column with the wife's own birthplace plus household continuity - correlation, which is ARGUMENT under proof-standard.md 2a, and ARGUMENT is Owen's grade. Contrast [109] and [1246], whose 1880 head was a WIDOW: there 'Son'/'Daughter' of the head DID state maternity and both graded DIRECT. THE LATER CENSUSES, AND HOW MANY VOICES THEY ACTUALLY ARE. 1900 Dodge Twp, Ford Co., KS (image 4120145_00414): Geo. W. West, Head, b. Nov 1866, Kansas / New York / Missouri. 1910 Grandview Twp, Ford Co., KS (image 31111_4328334-00854): 43, Kansas / New York / Missouri. 1930 Justice Pct 5, Harris Co., TX (image 4547976_00159): 63, Kansas / New York / Missouri. * COUNTED HONESTLY: those three are all GEORGE'S OWN HOUSEHOLD reporting, i.e. ONE informant repeated three times, not three independent records. * The genuine independence is TWO lines - the parental household (1870, 1880) and George as an adult. A fourth voice is his brother on the 1900 page: 'Dennis W., BROTHER, b. June 1879' = [1149] Dennis Wilbur West, b. 27 Jun 1879, the 'Infant 10/12' of the 1880 household, reporting the same parental pair. 1870 U.S. Census, WALKER TWP, ANDERSON CO., KANSAS (image 4264595_00305), dwelling 90 family 91: Wilber D. West 38 b. New York, real 1890 / personal 788 - Jane A. 32 b. MISSOURI - Angelia 9 - Elizabeth 7 - GEORGE 5 - Phebe 1. * THE 1870 SCHEDULE HAS NO RELATIONSHIP COLUMN AT ALL, so this is household composition and cannot grade anything. * Its ages run about two years high for the older children (George 5 against his recorded birth 20 Nov 1866) while Phebe is exact; recorded, not smoothed. * THE RESIDUAL, NAMED SO THE GRADE IS HONEST. * No marriage record for Wilbur Dennis West x Jane Ann Smith is in this tree, and family F414 spans [1142] Edgar b. 19 Dec 1856 to [1143] Rolland b. 25 Jun 1886, which would run Jane from 17 to 47 - wide enough that a FIRST WIFE CANNOT BE FORMALLY EXCLUDED. What holds the grade up is that a first wife would have to be MISSOURI-BORN TOO for the 1880 mother's-nativity cell to read 'Mo'. WHAT WOULD REOPEN IT: a marriage record for Wilbur Dennis West dated after 1866, or any record naming a prior Mrs. West. NEW LEAD, NOT ACTED ON: the 1880 page gives JANE A.'s own parents' birthplaces as father N.Y. and mother INDIANA - the first evidence in this tree bearing on [1120]'s own parentage. RECORDED NEGATIVE, so nobody re-books it: [1120] Jane Ann Smith (d. 10 Apr 1931, Dodge City, Ford Co., Kansas) is NOT enumerated with [807] in 1900, 1910 or 1930 - all three images checked 7 Sep 2026. She died in Ford Co. while he was in Harris Co., Texas from 1920. STILL OWED, and it is a lookup not a read: the 1900 and 1910 lines of [1119] and [1120] THEMSELVES, for the 'mother of how many children / number now living' and 'years married' columns (roadmap K480). Confirmed 7 Sep 2026 NOT attached to either parent and NOT present on [807]'s own 1900 or 1910 pages. Ford Co., Kansas - he lived there in both years and both parents died there. ** EVIDENCE BASIS: FATHER - an explicit 'Relation to Head of House' column. MOTHER - the child's own mother's-nativity column correlated with the wife's birthplace on the same page, plus household continuity from 1870 and George's own adult testimony 1900-1930. ** --- AMENDED 7 Sep 2026 - THE RESIDUAL NAMED IN THIS NOTE IS CLOSED BY A RECORD. Registers K505 and K506. The grade is unchanged and remains as graded above. This note states its own residual: that no marriage record for [1119] x [1120] is in the tree, that F414 spans 1856 to 1886, and that a first wife therefore cannot be formally excluded. There is a marriage record. Kansas, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1811-1911 (Ancestry coll. 61371 record 900041646, FHL film 001451454): 'Elizabeth Jane Ann Smith', female, married 23 Oct 1855 at Franklin, Kansas, spouse 'Wilber D West'. Franklin Co. adjoins Anderson Co., where the 1870 and 1880 households sit, and October 1855 in Kansas is Territory, not State - statehood is 1861. Set beside the 1900 U.S. Census of Marum Twp, Woodward Co., Oklahoma, ED 0247, sheet 5, dwelling and family 106, roll 1344 (Ancestry coll. 7602 records 68355966 and 68355967), in which BOTH spouses report 44 YEARS MARRIED, that marriage brackets his birth of 20 Nov 1866 from eleven years before it to thirty-four years after it. A PRIOR WIFE AS HIS MOTHER IS NOW EXCLUDED BY A RECORD RATHER THAN BY ARGUMENT ALONE. WHAT THIS IS NOT. It is not the reopening condition this note names, which was a [1119] marriage record dated AFTER 1866, or any record naming a prior Mrs. West. It is the opposite of both, and it strengthens the grade rather than disturbing it. The grade itself does not move: no record STATES his maternity, so the class above remains right under proof-standard.md section 2a. TWO LIMITS, STATED. The marriage entry is an INDEX ABSTRACT of five fields - name, gender, date, place, spouse. No image is offered on its detail page and none was viewed; the register page itself has not been seen, and territorial county returns are patchy. And that 1900 census was read from the INDEXED DETAIL PAGES, not from the image. A CORRECTION TO THE ERRAND THAT FOUND IT, so it is not re-derived: this lookup was booked for FORD CO., KANSAS, on the reasoning that he lived there in 1900 and 1910 and that both parents died there, in 1918 and 1931. In 1900 his parents were in WOODWARD CO., OKLAHOMA TERRITORY, enumerated as Father and Mother in the household of E. E. West, 28. A county where someone died constrains where they were twenty years earlier not at all. ALSO NEW FROM THAT 1900 CENSUS, and previously unrecorded anywhere in the tree: [1119]'s own parents are given as father born New York and mother born CONNECTICUT; [1120]'s as father born New York and mother born Indiana, the same pair the 1880 image gives. [1120] reports 12 CHILDREN BORN AND 7 LIVING. Her name there is 'Jane A West', aged 61, born May 1839 in Missouri; the marriage record calls her Elizabeth Jane Ann Smith and the Civil War pension index 'Elisabeth J A West'. THESE NAME FORMS ARE RECORDED AND NOT NORMALISED.