James Kittson, where are you?

I am still trying to track the Kittson family mentioned in the will of Herman Lutter, probated in 1924 and mentioned in a previous post.

Gussie Kittson was a niece of Herman Lutter.  Figuring that Gussie has long passed, I have been attempting to find any living descendants of hers.  In the 1920 census for Harrison, Hudson County, New Jersey, she has one son, James, five months old.  In the 1930 census, she still has only one child, James, aged ten years.  The 1940 census is not available yet.  So what happened to James Kittson, born about 1920?

In the online Social Security Death Index (available from various websites), there are two potential matches for James Kittson, born about 1920.

Social Security Death Index through Ancestry.com

I favored the first James Kittson because of the New Jersey location.  I visited the Montclair Public Library for the obit from the local paper, The Montclair Times.  No mention of James Kittson.  (Thank you to the librarians for searching and searching for him- in several places!)  To be extra thorough, I manually searched the microfilm of the Star Ledger at Montclair State University.  No James Kittson.  Whether or not I have the correct James Kittson, I find it strange that I find no obituary.  (And if I am ever under surveillance, my watcher would find it strange that I go in and out of libraries, courthouses, and churches all day.)

Next I visited Trenton and found the birth certificate for James Kittson- under the name Kitzens.

The birth date, 11 August 1919, confirms that the first James Kittson in the death index is the James Kittson that I am looking for.  This person died 21 September 2003.  So where is the obituary?  Did he marry?  Have children?  Will I find living descendants?  The search continues . . .

Fatal Train Ride, part two

Intrigued by the brutal death of Michael J. Preston in the previous post, I went to Trenton and copied his death certificate.

The cause of death is listed as "accidental rail road injuries."  From this description, I would guess that no official and thorough inquiry was made into his death.  He was an employee of the Central Railroad and found on a train trestle severely battered.  From that, the death was concluded as accidental- the train did it.  These things happen.  If he jumped off the train and was hit, then that could have killed him.  But how did anyone know he jumped?  No witnesses existed, either in the newspaper article or in the family story.

I think this could have been a murder.  It's too late now.

Fatal Destination on the Evening Train

Michael Preston was the grandson of Irish immigrants, Michael Preston and his wife, Catherine Donnell, who arrived in Dutchess County, New York in the 1840s.  The family eventually migrated to Hudson County, New Jersey.  Many are buried at Holy Name Cemetery in Jersey City.  The Preston family plot has no headstone, so information concerning their burials is based on the burial cards of the cemetery, available at the cemetery or through the Church of Latter-Day Saints.

Plot card for Holy Name Cemetery, Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey
FHL microfilm #1412638

Michael Preston was buried at Holy Name Cemetery on 20 June 1918.  Like most of his immediate relatives, he had no obituary; however the circumstances of his death caused him to appear in the newspaper.  He was found almost dead on a train trestle at night and died shortly after arriving at Bayonne Hospital.  His injuries were not necessarily consistent with a train injury, but instead were perhaps caused by a physical assault inflicted by a human- not a train.  Further investigations were probably made, so I should have additional resources to consult.

This article may lend credibility to the family story of falling asleep on the train on the way home from work, missing his stop, and jumping out of the window, only to have been killed.  Or maybe that was someone else.  Railroad work was a common profession in the 1800s and 1900s and deaths and injuries were commonplace among the workers as well as the passengers.  This Preston family was no exception.