I received Ida NOVAK's death certificate yesterday from the funeral home that handled her burial. They could not supply her husband John's death certificate because of a technicality with the Maryland state archives rules. I will have to send off for that separately. Ida's death certificate confirms information I had from other sources, but provides nothing new. The informant was listed as May WIDNER, whose address is near Dundalk, where Ida lived. No listing for a WIDNER in the on-line phone books, though. I'm still waiting for the Social Security application for John NOVAK.

I was down at the Newberry Library in Chicago yesterday. I went mainly to check on some German villages in Meyer's Orts Lexikon. Wickersheim showed up in Alsace, as I expected. Now I need to get the microfilms of the Lutheran baptisms there to see if Johann Georg Martin WEISS shows up when he should. This would also give me a starting point to look for his wife Anna HORNUNG, although they may have met in this country. While I was there, I also looked through the Germans to America series for Christian MUELLER's arrival in 1880. I found a couple of candidates, but I would have to look at the ship's manifests to know for sure.