Marietta (Ball) Smith 1908

Still unknown, and where we have looked

• Parents not identified. 2 searches recorded:
  ancestry all 2026-10-18 · HER PARENTS - which this file records as needing an SS-5 ORDER FROM THE SSA, because the SSACI entry is claim-derived and names none....

  Searched for: HER PARENTS - which this file records as needing an SS-5 ORDER FROM THE SSA, because the SSACI entry is claim-derived and names none. THE LEAD CAME FIRST, AND IT IS TREE-TIER: an Ancestry tree surfaced at the head of an unrelated search (?name=Marietta_Ball&marriage=1925_kansas-usa) gives "Marietta Reynolds Ball, b. 11 Jun 1907 Newton, Harvey, Kansas, d. 6 May 1999 Medford, Oregon, spouse Klark Livernois, father George M. Ball, mother Clara Frances Patterson". A tree is a lead, never evidence. ⇒ SO IT WAS TESTED AGAINST THE CENSUSES, BY PLACE rather than by name, because "Marietta" fuzzes hopelessly - a name search for her in 1910 returned 659 rows of every Ball with a middle initial M. Complete-county BALL lists for HARVEY CO., KANSAS (place id 1325, read from the form's Lived In box, exact token rebuilt by hand): (a) 1910 census, coll. 7884 - 45 rows, all read; (b) 1920 census, coll. 6061 - 31 rows, all read.

  Result: THE TREE'S COUPLE IS IN THE 1910 CENSUS, AND THE TWO LISTS TOGETHER IDENTIFY HER. (a) 1910, Newton Ward 3, Harvey Co., Kansas: George M Ball, Head, b. 1886 Kansas; Clara F Ball, Wife, b. 1891 Kansas; Mary E Ball, Daughter, b. 1908 Kansas; George J Ball, Son, b. 1909 Kansas. "George M." and "Clara F." are exactly the tree's two names, in exactly the town the tree gives for her birth - and the town where her son Billie Dean Billie Dean Cooper was born in 1927. THERE IS NO "MARIETTA" IN THE 1910 HOUSEHOLD. The daughter is indexed "Mary E" - which is what Marietta becomes when it is mis-read, but that is a guess until something tests it. (b) 1920, Newton Ward 1, tests it: "Marieta Ball", b. abt 1908 Kansas, GRANDDAUGHTER and "George Ball", b. abt 1909 Kansas, GRANDSON. ⇒ The same sibling pair - a girl of 1908 and a boy of 1909 - tracks across both censuses, and in 1920 the girl is spelled MARIETA. ⇒ HER PARENTS ARE GEORGE M. BALL AND CLARA F. BALL of Newton, Harvey Co., Kansas - attested now by a federal census and not only by a tree. The SS-5 order is no longer the only route to her parentage, though it would still give her own statement of it. AND THE SAME PAIR OF LISTS RAISES A NEW QUESTION: by January 1920 she and her brother are GRANDCHILDREN in another household, not children in their parents'. Something happened to George M. and Clara F. between 1910 and 1920 - death, separation or removal - and the 1920 Harvey Co. Ball list contains no George M. and no Clara F. at all. ALL OF THIS IS INDEX-TIER. The plates have NOT been pulled, no value is cropped, and no entry has been made. Graded probable, recorded as a search result, and deliberately NOT written into this file's header. See the todo:.
  ancestry all 2026-10-15 · FOLLOWING THE SSDI/NUMIDENT LEAD TO THE COLLECTION THAT NORMALLY RESOLVES IT - SSACI (coll. 60901), which extracts PARENTS' NAMES from...

  Searched for: FOLLOWING THE SSDI/NUMIDENT LEAD TO THE COLLECTION THAT NORMALLY RESOLVES IT - SSACI (coll. 60901), which extracts PARENTS' NAMES from the SS-5, where the NUMIDENT abstract already seen named none. Three passes: (a) Marietta_Smith, b. 1907 (1,053; the exact match is row 2); (b) Marietta_Livernois, no dates (37, all read); (c) Marietta_Cooper, b. 1907 (130; page 1 read).

  Result: NULL FOR PARENTAGE - the lead does NOT resolve here, and that is now established rather than untested. (a) One exact record, rec 812941166: "Marietta R Smith", female, b. 11 Jun 1907, d. 6 May 1999, CLAIM DATE 5 Jun 1969, SSN 559228102 - the whole detail table, read at full resolution. It carries NO parents and NO birthplace, because it is CLAIM-derived rather than application-derived. (b) The only Marietta R Livernois is b. 19 Jan 1932 Michigan, d. Feb 1984 - not her. (c) No Marietta Cooper b. 11 Jun 1907. ⇒ SSACI holds exactly one entry for this woman and it cannot name her parents. The SS-5 application itself (orderable from SSA) is the only record that would.
• Death not yet found. 5 searches recorded:
  familysearch records 2026-10-15 · THE OBITUARY DAILY TIMES DATABASE ITSELF, searched direct at obituaries.rootsweb.com/obits/searchObits (keyword "Marietta Smith"),...

  Searched for: THE OBITUARY DAILY TIMES DATABASE ITSELF, searched direct at obituaries.rootsweb.com/obits/searchObits (keyword "Marietta Smith"), because Ancestry's copy of this index drops two fields. Not a FamilySearch search - recorded under this engine for want of a vocabulary value for a free index; see the note.

  Result: FOUND, and it is better than Ancestry's rendering of the same entry -> [J.553]. VERBATIM: "SMITH, Marietta R (BALL)[COOPER][FERGUSON]; 91; Newton KS>Ashland OR; Mail Tribune; 1999-5-8; billeter". Per ODT's own published format - 'Last Name, First Name "Nickname" (Maiden Name) [Other Last Names]; Age; Place of Birth>Place of Death; Publication Abbreviation; Publication Date; tag name' - the PARENTHESES are the MAIDEN-NAME slot. ⇒ the compiler recorded BALL as her maiden name and Cooper and Ferguson as other married names, a distinction Ancestry destroys by flattening it to "[Ball[Cooper][Ferguson] Smith]". And the publication is NAMED: the Medford, Oregon MAIL TRIBUNE (a sibling row spells the place out: "MARIER, Teresa R;42;Medford OR;Mail Tribune;1995-11-12"), where Ancestry gives only "Publication Place: USA". Still an index compiled by a volunteer, not a vital record: no parents, no spouse, no children, no exact birth date, and the date is the OBITUARY's, not the death's.
  google 2026-10-15 · The REQUIRED Google leg for a death from c. 1995 on (CLAUDE.md §People item 6), which this file had never carried although she died in...

  Searched for: The REQUIRED Google leg for a death from c. 1995 on (CLAUDE.md §People item 6), which this file had never carried although she died in 1999. In the signed-in browser: (a) "Marietta" Smith obituary 1999 Ashland OR Medford Oregon Cooper Ball; (b) "Marietta R. Smith" obituary 1999 Oregon.

  Result: NULL. (b) returns Google's own "No results found for \"Marietta R. Smith\" obituary 1999 Oregon". (a) returns only unrelated bulk PDFs (an Oregon unclaimed-property list, cemetery and obituary indexes for other states) - and note that "Ashland OR Medford" was parsed as the boolean OR, so that phrasing is not worth repeating. ⇒ Unlike [J.522], no newspaper web archive or funeral-home page carries her; a 1999 Oregon obituary is early enough to predate most papers' online archives.
  genealogybank 2026-10-15 · SIGNED IN (chris_2535). Aiming at the Medford Mail Tribune obituary of 8 May 1999 that [J.553] dates and locates. (a) Obituary search -...

  Searched for: SIGNED IN (chris_2535). Aiming at the Medford Mail Tribune obituary of 8 May 1999 that [J.553] dates and locates. (a) Obituary search - last name Smith, first name Marietta, 1 Apr - 31 Dec 1999, all states, all four obituary sub-collections (All / Historical / Recent / Funeral Notices); (b) the Newspaper Archives collection, same name and dates, with the publication-location facet read.

  Result: NULL for her. (a) ONE obituary in the whole of 1999: "MARIETTA ANDREWS SMITH, 83, of Elberton died Saturday. Funeral, 2 p.m. today, Hicks Funeral Home, Elberton" - Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia, 27 Sep 1999. Not her. The state facet reads Georgia 1 and OREGON 0, every other state 0. (b) 350 newspaper-archive hits, and they are an artefact of the NAME MATCHING A PLACE: page 1 is entirely the Marietta Journal of Marietta, GEORGIA. Publication-location facet: OREGON 0. COVERAGE NOW ESTABLISHED (same day, later pass), and it CLOSES GenealogyBank for this obituary exactly as newspapers.com was closed. GenealogyBank's own "Newspapers by State - Oregon" source list (genealogybank.com/newspapers/sourcelist/or, "List of 212 Newspapers in Oregon") carries these four Medford rows VERBATIM: Medford Mail Tribune 02/23/2015 - Current - Obituaries Medford Mail Tribune 11/01/1909 - 07/31/1916 2084 Newspaper Archives Medford Rogue Valley Times 02/08/2023 - Current - Obituaries Medford ABC - 12 KDRV 04/02/2025 - Current - Obituaries ⇒ GenealogyBank holds the Medford Mail Tribune in TWO runs, 1 Nov 1909 - 31 Jul 1916 and 23 Feb 2015 - current, and 8 May 1999 falls in the eighty-nine-year gap between them. The service cannot return this obituary, whatever is searched. (c) The one Oregon collection that DOES cover 1999 was then checked on its own, because the same source list shows "County | Oregon funeral home notices and obituaries | 06/06/1998 - Current | Obituaries" - a statewide collection whose range contains the date. Search: first name Marietta, last name Smith, STATE = Oregon, NO date limit, all six collections. Counts returned: Newspaper Archives 82, Obituaries 1, U.S. Federal Census 5, SSDI 80, Government Publications 66, Historical Books 1. The single Oregon obituary is "Mrs Marietta Stayton Smith Nazarre, 82; BORN 24 May 1866 Toledo, Ohio; DIED 24 Mar 1949; Husband: William Grant Smith" in the Oregonian, Portland, 28 March 1949 - NOT her. The publication-location facet on the 82 newspaper-archive hits reads Ashland 1, Eugene 3, Portland 73, Salem 5 - MEDFORD 0. ⇒ Null against the funeral-home collection as well, on a search with no date limit at all. GenealogyBank is CLOSED as a route to the 8 May 1999 obituary.
  ancestry all 2026-10-15 · HER DEATH RECORD - and the first Ancestry search ever run on her (the maintainer noticed this file carried newspapers-com,...

  Searched for: HER DEATH RECORD - and the first Ancestry search ever run on her (the maintainer noticed this file carried newspapers-com, familysearch-records, familysearch-tree, genealogybank and findagrave rows but NO ancestry-all leg at all, so the three-engine gate was unmet). All collections: Marietta R Smith, b. 1907, d. 1999 (4,944,644 unfocused; page 1 of 20 read - the top rows are tightly clustered on her).

  Result: FOUND, and it breaks the deadlock that the 2026-10-10 rows recorded. Web: Obituary Daily Times Index 1995-2016 (coll. 70050, rec 21370883) indexes an obituary PUBLISHED 8 MAY 1999 for "Marietta R Smith [Ball[Cooper][Ferguson] Smith]", death age 91, b. ABT 1908 NEWTON, KANSAS, d. ABT 1999 ASHLAND, OREGON. ⇒ The index itself carries the surname chain BALL -> COOPER -> [FERGUSON] -> SMITH and a Kansas birthplace, so "Marietta R Smith of Oregon" is no longer tied to this family by the FamilySearch tree alone. Newton is the seat of Harvey Co., where she is recorded at 916 High in March 1925 [E.33]; Ashland is in Jackson Co., the county of the Oregon Death Index row. Also on page 1: Oregon Death Index (spouse "Willia"), SSDI (b. 11 Jun 1907, d. 6 May 1999, residence "Before 1951 California"), Public Records Index 1950-1993 (Medford, Oregon), and SIX Newspapers.com Obituary Index rows for "Marietta R. Smith" - none opened. "Ferguson" is a married name this catalog has never seen, and Livernois does NOT appear in the chain. Both need explaining. NEXT: the obituary of 8 May 1999 itself (Ashland Daily Tidings / Medford Mail Tribune) - the Obituary Daily Times is an INDEX and prints no obituary text.
  genealogybank 2026-10-10 · SIGNED IN (chris_2535). Obituaries: Marietta, keyword Medford (85, page 1 unrelated); Marietta Smith, keyword Eagle Point (0); Marietta...

  Searched for: SIGNED IN (chris_2535). Obituaries: Marietta, keyword Medford (85, page 1 unrelated); Marietta Smith, keyword Eagle Point (0); Marietta Smith, keyword Medford (no result list loaded).

  Result: No 1999 obituary found.
• Burial not yet found. 1 search recorded:
  findagrave 2026-10-10 · Find a Grave: Smith, Marietta, b. 1907 +/-1, d. 1999 +/-1, any location.

  Searched for: Find a Grave: Smith, Marietta, b. 1907 +/-1, d. 1999 +/-1, any location.

  Result: 4 results, none in Oregon - no memorial located.

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