SECURITY MEASURES
For years, Peggy Ash of Mesa, Ariz., tried to solve a family mystery. Her grandmother was a twin, but the two sisters’ tombstones have different birthdates—according to family story, the sister was born eight hours later, on the next day. For years, some relatives blamed the birth delay for the serious mental impairment that afflicted the twin sister all her life.
“But when the birth certificates became available online, they told nearly the opposite story,” Ash says. “The first twin born was her sister, shortly after midnight, and my grandmother was born four hours later, on the same day.”
That made Ash question whether the family’s version of the story was true: that the girl’s medical problems began as a toddler.
Then at a genealogy conference in 2019, Ash learned about Social Security-related records and began ordering them for her family. The Social Security application form (SS-5) for the twins’ father, Leonard Banks (image A), confirmed his 1879 birth details and parents’ names—well before birth records were kept in Utah Territory.
Even better, the SS-5 revealed his employment with the Union Pacific Railroad, which in turn led Ash to a thick pension file that provided more details. According to a report in the file, her grandmother’s sister was “besieged with convulsions at age 3. She continued this way until age 7 […] when a chiropractor treated
