Another Gust Doyle!

A few months ago George Eastman suggested using a search engine to do a general search for an ancestor.  He doesn't use Google so I decided to try Bing.com and typed my grandfather Gust Doyle's name into the search box.  And behold, Gust Doyle appeared at Find A Grave with a death date of 1909.  But wait, that's not my grandfather!  Who is this new little Gust Doyle who lived less than a year?

Find A Grave shows this information for little Gust:

Gust Doyle
Birth    9 Apr 1908
Death   Jan 1909 (aged 8-9 months)
Burial   Oak Hill Cemetery
            Sandy Lake, Mercer County, Pennsylvania, USA
Plot      Sect H

I couldn't leave a baby without searching for his parents.  Ancestry.com has Pennsylvania death certificates so I searched there first, and found a death certificate for Gust Andrew Doyle (available here if you have an Ancestry.com account).

This is a transcription of his certificate.

Certificate of Death. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics
  1.  Place of Death
      County of Mercer, Borough of Stoneboro
      Registration District No. 698, Primary Registration District No. 1383
      File No. 27847
  2.  Full Name    Gust Andrew Doyle
PERSONAL AND STATISTICAL PARTICULARS
  3.  Sex   Male
  4.  Color or Race    White
  5.  Single, Married...   Child
  6.  Date of Birth   April 23, 1910
  7.  Age   10 mos. 24 ds.
  8.  Occupation   none
  9.  Birthplace   Stoneboro, Pa.
10.  Name of Father    George Doyle
11.  Birthplace of Father   Pennsylvania
12.  Maiden Name of Mother    Emma Everall
13.  Birthplace of Mother    Pennsylvania
14.  Informant   Elizabeth J. Jones, Stoneboro
15.  Filed   Mar 19, 1911   D. K. Harmen  Local Registrar
16.  Date of Death   Mar 18, 1911
17.  I hereby certify, that I attended deceased from  Mar 5 1911  to  Mar 18 1911, that I last saw him alive on  Mar 17, 1911,  and that death occurred, on the date stated above, at  3 a.M.
The Cause of Death was a follows
Flue Colitis
Duration   14 ds.
(Signed)   D. R. ????, M.D.
Mar 19, 1911 (Address)   Stoneboro, Pa
18.  [blank]
19.  Place of Burial or Removal   Oak Hill     Date  Mar. 19, 1911
20.  Undertaker   A. M. Yeager, Stoneboro, Pa.

This death certificate gives me the information I need to find his parents and begin gathering and recording their family, but you may notice that the birth and death dates are different on the death certificate and the gravestone. 

Comments and Observations

• Concerning the discrepancy of dates between the gravestone the death certificate (the death certificate dates are April 23, 1911 and March 17, 1911 and the gravestone gives April 9, 1908 and January 1909), I'll need to do further research.  Because the information on the death certificate appears to have been given soon after his death and by a doctor, I believe it is accurate.  But I can't help wonder how the difference in dates happened; perhaps a handwritten note and a transcription error.  I also wonder that his parents didn't have his grave marker remade with accurate information.
  
• I doubt that the death certificate and gravestone refer to two different infants, both with the same name, but I will look for his parents' burial location to see if they were buried on the same plot or near each other.  
  
• Little Gust's father, George, is my grandfather's uncle.  I think it's endearing to imagine that the baby was named after my grandfather.  His middle name, Andrew, may come from an uncle or his grandfather who were both Andrew Doyle.
• When I searched Bing.com, only this Find A Grave record for Gust Doyle was returned in the search results.  I've written many blog posts about my grandfather, most of which show up with a Google search.  It was only when I clicked on images that my grandfather's face appeared in a number of photos and many more documents from blog posts.  Hmmmm.  A comparison of search engines for family history could be an interesting blog post.
  

-–Nancy.

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