As I mentioned in the last article, I have been unable to find the 1985 owner of the house I am researching as a purchaser of the property (called the grantee). So I have been using some other resources that genealogists will find to be familiar. I looked for the Fitzgerald family in the St. Louis County Directories, working my way backwards from when I knew they owned the house in 1985. I was able to find them at the same address all the way back to 1943. The 1943 directory stated that Emmet Fitzgerald owned the home along with James Graham. At that point I looked at the 1940 census, where I found the Fitzgerald family living in the home, along with the Graham family. So perhaps I should have been looking for Graham as the grantee instead of Fitzgerald, though that seems weird since Fitzgerald ultimately sold the house in 1985. I still should have been able to locate Fitzgerald buying out Graham at some point. Or having the house deeded over to him. At any rate, it is another clue.

I continued working my way backwards through the directories with Graham, and when he no longer appeared I used the earlier census records to find out who was living in the home. At this point I have established that Rudolph Huelke owned the home in 1920, and that he registered for the draft in 1918 listing the same home as his address. The family that appears in the 1910 census is shown to be renting the home. That means I need to look for Huelke as a grantee from 1910 through 1918.

In the meantime I have continued my pursuit of John J. Murdock, and I will update my most recent findings in the next article.