The Hyphen Family Lineage

Note: Researcing Della Collett

My first information about Della's existence was from Mark Myers, for whom Della was his paternal grandmother. He provided her name, said that at one point he had seen a marriage certificate for Della and his grandfather (George Henry Myers Sr.), and that she died in childbirth delivering her only son (George Henry Jr.) according to family recollection.

Working from the assumption that she was around the same age as George Sr., and that Mark gives that George Jr. was born in New Kensington, Westmoreland Cty, Pennsylvania (near to Washington Cty, Pennsylvania, where George Sr. was born and raised), I first found a 1920 US Census listing for the household of Belgian-born widow "Louise Collit," with a twenty-one-year-old daughter Della and a twenty-three-year-old son Earl (both Pennsylvania-born), in Arnold, Westmoreland Cty. Searching back from there, the next record I found was for Belgian-born "Louisa Collet," also in Arnold, and with several children ranging in age from eighteen down to two. The children's birthplaces were listed as beginning in Ohio, progressing to Indiana, and then finally Pennsylvania for the youngest, daughter "Sena."

One of the older sons listed in the household in 1900, Edgar, appears to have married just a handful of years later (1906) in nearby Armstong Cty, Pennsylvania; his marriage record names his parents Alexander and Louise Collet. Another of the elder children, Frances Adaline (who appears to have been the sixteen-year-old "Fannie" in the 1900 US Census), married in 1910 in Stark Cty, Ohio at the age of twenty-six; her marriage record names her parents "Alexander Collett" and "Louise Denwee." Further searches for Alexander turned up a death record from Arnold, Westmoreland Cty, in early 1899. (This record indicates his birthplace as France, rather than Belgium.)

I have not yet found any birth or death records for Della, then - only some records that suggest that her parents were Belgian and French, and that they appear to have immigrated to America in the early 1880s before settling in Ohio, then Indiana, and finally in Westmoreland Cty, Pennsylvania. I have not found a death or burial record for Louise, and have found some records for at least a few of Della's siblings suggesting they married and had children. Much more thorough research in local files would probably be required to help confirm Della's vital dates and family history.