Found: Bennie England Craft Jr.

When my Great-Uncle passed away in 2005, there was something surprising in his obituary: mention of a brother that I'd never heard of. According to the obituary, my great-uncle had been, "preceded in death by brothers, B.E. Craft Jr., Marvin Craft and Thomas Craft." But who was B.E. Jr.? I'd never seen another mention of him - and this is a well researched family line.

I'd had no further success researching this new great-uncle - until last night. I was wondering around Ancestry.com's family trees and landed on the page of my great-aunt Mary Frances Craft. On her page was a story, titled "B. E.'s Burial." It read:

"When B.E. died only his sister Mary Frances Craft was able to go because the rest of the family was too sick the the flu to attend. She said the funnal home did a good job cleaning him up and put him in a pine box. - Story told by Mary Frances Craft to Jessica Mica"

Success! Finally, a piece of information proving the existence of my great-uncle. But it sounds like a sad story, and didn't really provide an data or dates. But, it did give me some idea of when B.E. might have died. His sister, Mary Frances, attended her funeral. Frances was born in 1922, and was old enough to attend the funeral on her own and to remember the event. So, he probably died in the late 20's or later.

I decided to check out GA death certificates. The online Georgia Virtual Vault is a great resource for those with GA ancestors. They recently added un-indexed 1928-1930 death certificates that I had not finished looking through. So, I headed over to check it out - no success. But wait! Craft is often indexed as Croft..... success!!! There it was, the obituary of B. E. Craft Jr.

The poor thing was only 8 months old and died of pneumonia.