Looking for info on my Welsh family in Illinois. My grandfathers name was Thomas Roy Ralph Griffith?

My grandfather was disowned by his family (actually his father was disowned) because he married a black woman. My grandfathers name was Thomas Roy Ralph Griffith, and he was born in Champaign Ill. He died in the 1950's of kidney/liver cancer, to my understanding he was only 25 years old. He was born to a Welsh father and black/cherokee mother. he had brothers and sisters out of Ill. but all are deceased. any information would be helpfull, I am trying to build my family tree, and have run into road blocks because my Griffith family disowned us because of our race.

Looking for info on my Welsh family in Illinois. My grandfathers name was Thomas Roy Ralph Griffith?
The name Thomas Griffith is too common and your dates too vague for me to look him up in the census with any accuracy. Can you give me his parents or sibling's names?





The only thing I found that could be him is a index to a cemetery reading:





Cemetery Records of Champaign County, Illinois, vol 9: Mount Hope Cemetery, Champaign -- west half (1961); page 204 includes GRIFFITH, THOMAS ROY
Reply:It surprises many people that records of living persons can be harder to locate, and once you get back to the early 1900's or 1800's, the doors "open". If possible, you need to zoom in to locate the exact date of death or maybe the cemetery where he is buried. The goal is his death certificate, which should show the names of his parents. Deaths since about 1960 will be in the social security death index, but he died before that. Do you know the names of those siblings?? They could be listed, and you could use that as a "back door", perhaps finding an obituary for them that includes the parents. The 1930 census is open for research, although not always posted online through the free sites.


I did check rootsweb.com's family files.. using the advanced search with Griffith and Champaign as search keys, there are a number of entries. One of those could be his relatives even though he is not listed.
Reply:you could also try Ancestry.com...good luck!
Reply:familytree.com

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