The Cigar Maker

I've been trying to locate the burial location for James A. Wilson and his wife Viola V. V. Lundy. They were the brother and sister of my great grandparents and had married two years before. Two brothers married two sisters.

I'd heard they were buried in Major Adams cemetery near my great grandparents. Viola died in 1905 soon after the birth of their son Emery. I think James died a couple years later.

Two years ago I was in Bradenton for a week and visited the cemetery twice. I checked every marker but didn't find one for them. There are a couple unmarked plots near the other Wilson graves but I couldn't locate any records for the ownership of the plots in this old cemetery.

In researching them I tried to find James on the census from 1910 but couldn't locate him at all. I then looked for their son Emery. I was surprised to find him on the 1910 census living with his aunt Ellen Wilson Dortch very close to my great grandparents in Oneco, Florida. This probably means his father had died by 1910.

I then found him on the 1920 census in Tampa, Florida, this time living with Ellen Dortch's daughter, Lucy Wilson Lynn and her husband Bert. Emery was listed as a Cigar Maker, as was Bert. Tampa at that time was pretty much the Cigar Capital of the USA.

I didn't find any record of Emery after that for a long time. Then one day found an Emery Wilson on the 1930 census living in Detroit, Michigan. This one was shown as being born in Florida and his occupation was shown as a Cigar Maker. So Emery moved to Michigan for some reason. He was not married at the time and living in a boarding house. I've never found any record of him after that census so don't know what happened to him. And the mystery of where his parents are buried is still there.