Abel and Raymond: Two Who Disappeared - SNGF

For this week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings suggested we do this:

1. Sometimes an ancestor or relative just disappears out of the records and we cannot find another record after a certain date. 
2. Tell us about one or more of your relatives or ancestors who have disappeared and not been found since a certain date.  Do you have any idea of what might have happened to them?

Abel Armitage disappeared sometime after 1881.  He is one of my great-great-grandfathers, a coal miner who was born in Yorkshire West Riding, England, in 1821, and immigrated from Durham, England in 1864.  He settled in Steubenville, Ohio, where he continued the work of coal mining.  In the 1880 U.S. Census he is recorded as disabled.  The most recent evidence of him is in Steubenville City Council records in which he was awarded money from a court case against the city of Steubenville.  People don't just disappear!  Except he did.  I've searched every source I can think of that might be helpful including online court records, census records, newspapers of the time, probate records, cemetery records, and more.  One of his sons happens to share his father's name, so his name turns up often in records, but he's the wrong man.

I thought perhaps Abel might have moved to West Virginia, or Pennsylvania, but haven't found any records in either of those states.  My search of British records and newspapers was unsuccessful.  I thought he might have returned to England.  That was a challenge because there were two men named Able Armitage in the area where my Abel was born, one three years after my Abel.  I also searched a variety of name variations.  It seems strange that there's no obituary or death record.  Every now and then I search again, thinking new online records might shed some light.  

Raymond Doyle is the adopted son of my great-grandparents, William and Tressa Doyle, and my paternal grandfather Gust Doyle's brother.  He was born about 1904 or 1905, presumably in Mercer County, Pennsylvania..  By 1920 Raymond was living at the State Institution for the Feeble-minded in Polk, Pennsylvania, and the 1950 U.S. Census shows him living in the Mercer County Home in Coolspring Township, Mercer County, Pennsylvania.  I met Raymond sometime around 1960 at the County Home, but have no knowledge of what became of him after I met him.  My best guess is that he died at the County Home.

Since I don't know his birth name, I can't search for a birth record.  Adoption records are sealed in Pennsylvania so that's a closed door.  I thought there would be a record of his death in Pennsylvania death certificates, but have not found one.  The Mercer County home is no longer in existence and I haven't discovered if records are available somewhere, though it's likely they're sealed, too..  I have not found an obituary; I assume he would not have had one.  I haven't found him in any cemetery records.  And there seem to be no family records for Raymond. 

Again and again, these two men come to mind, almost as though they're pestering me.  I want to know what happened to them--it's as if knowing their end would allow me to put them, and the search for them, to rest.  

Thanks for the fun, Randy.

—Nancy.

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