Do you ever stumble on information about a cousin thru a simple Google search? Well, that was my situation when researching George A. Buntin, a great great grandson of John Lewis Ricketts making him a 3rd cousin once removed to me.
Besides the normal census and cemetery records, one of the Ancestry hints for him led me to his obituary in Wilmington, Delware’s The News Journal.
George A. Buntin
George A. Buntin, 68, 0f 2302 Marlyn Drive died Tuesday of cancer in Christiana Hospital.
Mr. Buntin was a research chemist at Hercules Inc. for 40 years. He retired in 1962.
He was a member of the American Chemical Society, Limestone Presbyterian Church and Hercules Country Club. He attended the University of Delaware’s Academy of Lifelong Learning and he was especially interested in art. He was a 1941 graduate of Purdue University.
He is survived by his wife, Mary Clegg Buntin, two sons, g. David of Atlanta and Steven A. of Gaithersburg, Md. And a brother, Harold W. of Bowling Green, Ky.
Memorial services will be 11 a.m. Saturday in Limestone Presbyterian Church, 3201 Limestone Road. Burial will be private.
Instead of flowers, the family suggests contributions to the American Cancer Society, Wilmington.
“George A. Buntin,” The News Journal (Wilmington, Delaware), 2 March 1989, page 24; digital images, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : viewed online 29 November 2021).
Since the obituary named the company he worked for, I did a search of Newspapers.com for his name and the name of the company (George Buntin Hercules). That led me to an article discussing George’s promotion to senior research chemist.
2 Promoted by Hercules
The appointments of George A. Buntin to the position of senior research chemist and Dr. John Floyd as research supervisor at Hercules Powder Company’s Research Center have been announced by Dr. Peter VanWyck, director of the center.
A graduate of Purdue University with a B.S. in chemistry, Mr. Buntin joined Hercules in 1942 as a chemist.
Dr. Floyd, who will be research supervisor in the Virginia cellulose research division, has been a research chemist with Hercules since July, 1955.
“2 Promoted by Hercules,” The News Journal (Wilmington, Delaware), 27 September 1960, page 21; digital images, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com : viewed online 2 December 2021).
Since the newspaper didn’t provide much other information about his career, I turned to Google. And that’s where I discovered that George A. Buntin had several patents.
Based on this simple Google search, I then turned to the site, patents.google.com. A search of this site for George Buntin produced 67 results.
Even though the first patent listed on patents.google.com is for ‘lowering serum cholesterol’ the vast majority of the patents involve herbicides and insecticides.
If I hadn’t done the Google search for George and Hercules, I would never have discovered his work to develop some of the chemicals we rely on today.
After drafting this post, The Legal Genealogist published a post about patents. Those interested in finding information on patents should check out her post, Those Other Patents.