Howard Creighton Sloan, Chicago, Illinois, died 9 March 1940 I am looking for an obituary or any information at all about my grandfather, Howard Creighton Sloan (1873-1940). I came to Chicago in 1997 to search for this information but could find nothing. I have since learned from the Illinois State Death Index that he died in Mattoon, Cole County, Illinois on 9 March 1940. However, I have no idea what he was doing down in Cole County. I assume that his obituary would have been published in Chicago, where he spent most of his life. He was born in Philadelphia on 18 March 1873. The 1910 census, reel 273, T624, Vol. 090, E.D. 1236, Visit # 0196 shows three additional members of the household. These are William Sloan, son, age 20, born Illinois, Gerdrud Sloan, daughter, age 17, born Illinois and Albert Sloan, son, age 14, born Illinois. I have otherwise never heard of William Sloan, Gredrud Sloan, and Albert Sloan. I have asked my Sloan cousins and they have never heard of them either. I imagine that they may have been from a previous wife that he never bothered to tell us about. The Sloan side of my family did not keep records. I went to Chicago a few years ago and tried to get the divorce records for my father and his father and the death record of my grandfather. I could not obtain any of these items. My father Leroy Bayfield Sloan divorced his first wife, Marion June Dossing, in 1936 and married my mother in 1937. My father had a son by his first wife, who would be my half-brother. My father died in 1986. My father's father was Howard Creighton Sloan. He divorced my grandmother Emily Bayfield in September 1928. He died in 1940. I believe that he had a previous wife and perhaps some children by her but I have not been able to find out their names or anything about them. By the way, my father often bragged that Howard Creighton Sloan was heir to a fortune of $50 million in General Motors Stock. My mother said that this was not true, that Howard Creighton Sloan died a pauper. I am sure that my mother was right, but I would like to have the proof of this. I am not trying to get the money which I am sure does not exist. To the contrary, after my father died a bunch of lawyers in Lynchburg Virginia filed lawsuits to get that money, so I need to prove that it never existed. If you ever find the money, you can keep half. Going back, I have almost no information about the ancestors of Howard Creighton Sloan or his wife Emily Bayfield. The 1880 census for Pennsylvania shows that the father of Howard Creighton Sloan was Creighton Sloan who had five other children. I have not been able to find out what happened to any of them, except that I have read that his wife was Elizabeth who lived the last years of her life in Chicago. Similarly, I have almost no information about Emily Bayfield or her parentage. I do not even know where they came from or how they got to America, except that her father was named Thomas Bayfield and her mother was named Emily Peterson. If you ever come across information about any of these people, please let me know. Sam Sloan