On April 17,1929 Babe Ruth married his second wife, Claire Hodgson. I
know she always falsified her age. I require someone with access to
the 1900 Georgia census for this question. She was born near Athens,GA
but her family moved to Gainsville,GA before she was one yr. old. So
one will have to check both towns in the 1900 Georgia census. Her
father was James Monroe Merritt. Her mother was Carrie Lou
(Rylle)Merritt. Her brothers were Eugene and Hubert L. Claire also had
married a man named Frank Bishop Hodgson, who died Feb.16,'21. Claire
also had a daughter named Julia(who was born around Feb.16,'16 and is
still alive in Conway,NH.  I can pay $15. for the info in the 1900
Georgia census. It would only give ages(not dates)of all the family
members. The 1920 census gives her age as 22. I suspect she was born
around 1893.

Bluestreak --

I hope that you're not creating a new version of Trivial Pursuit with
these questions because I'll be sunk!

A search of the 1900 Soundex cards lists James M. Merritt in Jefferson
Twp. (Jackson County), GA.  He and the family are in ED 84; vol. 41;
sheet 8; line 1.  (I tried to make a copy for you but the microfilm
print reproduced very poorly.)

Here are the details:
James M. Merritt, b. March, 1862, South Carolina
Wife: Cornelia L., b. March, 1872, Georgia

Eugene: born July, 1890, Georgia
Hubert L.: born October, 1894, Georgia
Clara: born September, 1897, Georgia

The errors here are consistent with what I've seen for my own family,
with slightly different versions of names being common.  I check
through all of the Merritts in Georgia, so I'm sure that these are
your targets.

Interestingly, Claire's age would be consistent with the 1920 Census.

Obviously there's no Google search strategy for this answer, as it
used the NARA microfilm archives.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

---

Clarification of Answer by omnivorous-ga on 25 Nov 2002 15:44 PST

Bluestreak --

Thanks for your kind words.

I couldn't BELIEVE that I couldn't get any of the additional data for
the baseball owners -- not even George Argyros, who's alive and well
as ambassador to Spain.  I still think Jacob Rupert has a middle name,
though other researchers don't.

In this case we had to go back to the original microfilms.  It was
actually a fairly easy task because all of 1900 has been Soundexed, so
I wasn't searching through Jackson county sheets looking for Merritts.
 It turns out that there are a lot of them!

You do have the Google researchers curious about what you're doing
with all of the information!!

And a final note: the more that you can supply about what you've done,
the better it is for researchers.  I just answered a question about a
Rebmann Co. that was only possible because the customer provided one
final shred of data.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

My Dearest Omnivorous,                                                
         I'm beyond speechless! Way beyond. I'm so flabbergasted &
astonished that I'm not functioning. I hesitated to post this one, due
to it's almost impossible. I had thought that no one would search for
me anymore if I got too far removed from reality!  Wow!!!  Thank you
so so very very much. How you did it is marvelous. Ancestry.com has
not even indexed the census for 1900 or 1910. I thought I'd have to
wait a few years. You are amazing ominvorous the Great!