Dad

As children, we rarely think about our parents’ lives. In fact, my adolescent self would have said with some certainty my own parents didn’t really exist until my siblings and I came along. (The “obviously,” if not spoken, would certainly have been implied.)

Now that I’m older I realize how lucky I am to have a mother who is still lively enough at ninety to answer some of the questions I’m sure I would regret not asking. (We use Bob Greene and D.G. Fulford’s “To Our Children’s Children” as a guide.)

However, my dad died in 2002, having been afflicted with Alzheimer’s several years earlier. This cut short any possibility of hearing much about the life he led before I knew him.

Oh, there were inklings of the past:

• The foreign money and Japanese teapot he brought back from World War II.
• Mom’s mention that he’d been in high school at age twelve.
• Him once saying there had been a fire sometime in his childhood, his family escaping with only their blankets.
• Also, he had a college education — a rarity in our neighborhood — a BS from Glenville State (in West Virginia) financed through the GI Bill.
• There, he finished his coursework in three years, planning to become a teacher … at least until the experience of student teaching convinced him otherwise.
• He was in a fraternity, and for a long time our spankings were administered with a paddle he’d received on joining. I realize now it was probably part of a hazing ritual. (A paddling by your future frat brothers seems positively innocent in these days of students dying by alcohol poisoning in similar rituals, although from the Wikipedia page, it’s clear needless deaths by fraternity hazing has a long and tragic history.)
• Somewhere there exists a picture of Dad at a bar in his Navy uniform, and I also remember Mom saying my grandpa told him he’d never amount to anything(!) because he evidently liked to drink.
• That may have something to do with another story he told me, about how while he was in college, he’d once bought and drank a six-pack. Since alcohol was forbidden on campus, he threw the bottles outside someone else’s window. That “someone else” turned out to be a football player who was either kicked off the team or banned for some games as a result.
  “Did you ever tell him?” I asked.
  Dad responded, “Are you kidding? He would have beaten the sh– out of me!”
• As kids, we each had a turn wearing his US Navy uniform for Halloween. It fit because he was just a skinny kid when he joined.
• Someone (maybe Dad himself) told me me he got two leaves while in the service. On one, he got the mumps. On the other, it was the measles.
• He also got miserably seasick when he first went to sea.

• 

  This teapot, which Dad brought back from Japan, was decorated with hand-painted yellow and red flowers, which eventually washed away after the pot was used for too many tea parties.

• 

  The flag from Dad’s funeral

Sometime after his death, in one of my genealogical research frenzies, I even sent away for Dad’s service records. And when my stepmother went into a nursing home, my stepsister kindly made sure I got most of his papers, some of which I’ve scanned and put into archival boxes.

Still, I never really pieced the information into a cohesive whole (and haven’t yet).

What I have done, just recently, is put together a timeline of his military service, and it’s that I’m sharing now. It’s not the story of a dashing hero, but a teenager from West Virginia who found himself thousands of miles from the mountains in a place very different from home.

In June 1943, Dad was considered available for work in an essential activity at his area of residence, which was Massillon, Ohio. Until I saw this form, I didn’t realize he had moved to Ohio with his parents before the war. They were in WV for the 1940 census, so this would have been a recent move. He was sixteen when he received the document, and it was good only until September of the same year.

From his separation papers, I learned he was employed by Republic Steel in Massillon as a “helper on open hearth furnace” from May 1943 to November 1944. My grandfather’s obituary said Grandpa he retired in 1964 with 21 years at Republic, so he probably got Dad the job.

I found an article from Indeonline.com that quoted a former Republic employee, “The area was ripe with manufacturing jobs. [Al] Longbrake remembers people joking that if they didn’t like their job they could walk down the street and find another one because someone was always hiring. The other joke of the time, he said, came from the West Virginians who came to the city for work. ‘They used to say that in West Virginia you studied the three Rs: reading, writing and Route 21.'” 

So, my family wasn’t the only one who made the northern trek to Massillon for work. The 1940 census also says Grandpa had been doing roadwork on “Public Emergency Work (WPA, NYA, CCC, etc.).” According to Mom, he dug ditches, and a well-paying job in a steel mill must have been appealing, even if it meant moving hundreds of miles.

But working in an essential industry didn’t keep my dad out of the war for long. From the same separation papers, I found the date of his enlistment, 4 October 1944. He always said he enlisted to avoid being drafted into the Army.

However, his “report for service card” instructs him to show up on 3 October of the same year.

From there, he was sent to the U.S. Naval Training Center, Great Lakes, IL, which naval archives tell us was (and is) on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. The change of address card above was sent to my grandmother on
15 November 1944.

Grandma got a similar card in February 1945 telling her Dad was going to Shoemaker, CA (in Alameda County).

Troops were sent to California by train, which I remember Dad once mentioning to The Engineer. That memory is fuzzy, but I confirmed by a Library of Congress audio recording of Raymond Harris’s oral history of his war. (I also remember Dad saying something about stopping in Kansas, but Raymond doesn’t mention that.)

This recording confirmed a lot of things I remembered hearing from my dad, and if you have any interest in hearing about US military veterans’ history, I highly recommend checking out that part of the LOC website.

Just two crazy sailors: Dad is on the right. His friend, Leonard Bujak is on the right.

Dad and Raymond (from the LOC recording) were both assigned to the USS Mount Olympus, although Raymond was discharged before my father. Mount Olympus was an AGC (Amphibious Group Command), launched in August 1943, sailing for the Philippines where she served as a floating headquarters.

From the naval military history website:

“… she called at Ulithi to allow Commander, 3d Amphibious Force, to disembark to travel by plane to Hawaii, while she herself sailed for overhaul at San Francisco, arriving 11 February[Kym’s note:1945] and leaving 22 April for Hawaii and Guam.

Arriving Guam 6 July, Mount Olympus sailed on for Manila, colliding en route with oiler Millicoma. The flagship was escorted to San Pedro Bay, Leyte, for repairs by Ajax, then continued to Manila, arriving 3 August. After the close of hostilities, Mount Olympus arrived Tokyo Bay 2 September with the 1st Cavalry Division on board for Yokohama. After 8 months moving occupation troops from the Philippines and other bases to ports in Japan and China, she left Shanghai 28 May 1946 for San Diego, the Panama Canal, and New York, arriving 7 July.”

This, in a nutshell, was my father’s war.

According to Raymond, the ship stopped at San Diego, Pearl Harbor, Guam, and the Philippines, where they were rammed. Another ship was torpedoed around that time and place. While the Olympus was in dry dock being repaired, those on board got the news that the atomic bomb had been dropped.

The Olympus led the convoy into Tokyo Bay, which Raymond described as being full of ships and “thick with airplanes, B29s.” Raymond compared the ship to the Pentagon because it carried the commanders. Dad had referred to it as a troop carrier.

When asked what there was to do on the ship, Raymond said not much, although there was a band and sailors got shore leave about once every four days while in port. He said the Navy was really confining, “not like the Army,” which “let you stay out all night.” Apparently, the Navy let you off around one o’clock, and you had to be back aboard by five.

I listened to a few tapes of men who had been on the ship, and one of them (possibly Raymond) described going on shore leave as being surrounded by sailors, that all he could see was the white hats of their uniforms.

According to both Raymond and my Dad, at one point Admiral Byrd was on the ship (interesting because it’s possible there is an extremely distant relationship between the two Byrds — my father and the admiral).

And Raymond also mentions them going back and forth between Japan and China.

I know Dad was in Tokyo for the official Japanese surrender because I have this.

I had wondered why Dad had saved an envelope and learned through my research that this is a piece of history. According to the Universal Ship Cancellation Society (who knew such an organization existed?), this is an example of a “fancy cancel” in honor of the surrender. When I looked more closely, I noticed the date (the day of the surrender) and the logo on the left side of the envelope which includes the letters “V” and “J” for VJ (Victory in Japan) Day.

On the Fold3 database, I found three muster rolls for Dad on the Mount Olympus, one for the quarter ending October 1945, one for January 1946, and one as he was being discharged in July of 1946. In October 1945, he was an S2c (Seaman 2nd class), but by January 1946, he’d worked up to being an S1 (Seaman), and his discharge paper lists him as having been AS (Able Seaman), S2/c,1/c. I couldn’t find out what the c,1/c means, but I believe Able Seaman and Seaman 1st Class may be interchangeable.

On 23 April 1946, they were in port in Shanghai when a tragedy unfolded on an LST (Landing Ship, Tank) that was also stationed there. A nineteen-year-old sailor just two months out of the US and fresh off standing a two-hour midnight watch “went suddenly berserk” and shot to death nine shipmates before stabbing himself. The quote is direct from several Newspaper.com clippings, leading me to believe the papers copied it word for word from a naval press release. The young sailor also injured a tenth shipmate before being knocked to the ground with a bench by another sailor.

Dad kept a clipping about the funeral services, and I can’t help wondering what he thought when he heard about the event.

Three months later, at age nineteen, Dad was discharged and given a travel allowance to find his way home from New York.

This paper provides a wealth of information — everything from how much money Dad got on being discharged, what medals he was eligible for, where he had worked right before the war, and what kind of additional training he was hoping to receive.

A further review of the document says he had three years of high school when he enlisted at seventeen. We know he was working at the steel mill by age sixteen, which means he had to have completed those years before going to work.

Ergo, he was in high school by at least age thirteen.

A deeper look at the 1940 census tends to uphold my mom’s version of events — that he skipped two grades and was in high school at twelve. From the census (taken in April), Dad is listed as having completed eight years of school at age thirteen. From this, we can surmise, he was in his first year of high school, having turned thirteen in November the previous year. Meanwhile, his younger sister, age ten, has completed three years of schooling.

If I had to guess, I’d say it’s likely the family moved to Massillon sometime after Dad’s third year of high school, and he didn’t re-enroll until after the war. If my grandfather’s obituary is accurate (and it may not be), Grandpa started at the steel mill in 1943. Of course, there’s no way of knowing if he started work immediately at Republic or if the obituary is accurate.

Moving forward from Dad’s discharge from the Navy, I found him mentioned in the 22 May 1947 issue of the Evening Independent (Massillon). This article says fifty-two of Massillon Washington High School’s 452 graduates (the largest class in history at that time) were veterans of World War II who completed their studies by correspondence. My father is listed among them.

Referring again to the separation document, I noticed under “Preference for additional training,” Dad asked for apprentice training (the handwritten copy spells out what “App. Tng.” stands for).

I wondered what happened to change his mind. But, then I remembered Grandma.

My Grandma Byrd was that unusual creature (especially in West Virginia), an educated woman. I wrote about her family in an earlier post focusing on the fact that at least three children of six in her family had some college education or vocational training.

Her husband, my grandfather, like many in that time and place, completed eighth grade. But Grandma finished the year of college necessary for her to teach school in a one-room schoolhouse.

One of her brothers attended Glenville State for two years, and a sister was in nurse’s training when she died of TB.

I know Glenville was a teacher training college, which makes me wonder if that’s also where Grandma went.

At any rate, I’m sure it was she who changed my dad’s mind and set him on a path to higher education.

Like so many others of his time, my dad’s life was changed by war when he was still in his teens. Although he never fought in any battles, I’m sure he saw the aftermath of those waged in the South Pacific.

I think about myself at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, and can only wonder how he must have felt.

Dad served one year, nine months, and fourteen days and is buried with many of his fellow veterans in the Ohio Western Reserve National Cemetery.

Our Ancestors: We Know We Can Make It Through Because We Know They Did

It’s been a weird few weeks, I think we all can agree. In all my born days, I never could have predicted something like coronavirus could scour the world as it has.

That’s not quite true. I’ve predicted a pandemic for years. I just never believed it would happen.

I find it hard to believe even now, even though I know it’s gone way beyond weird to tragic.

So many people are sick and dying, while so many more are unable to work.

Meanwhile, our so-called leaders can’t even manage to pass a bill to help those who need it most.

My answer: Do something now to help our country’s citizens. Argue about how to the big corporations later. And be sure to factor in more accountability than the last bailout.

But, this is not a political diatribe.

It’s a reminder.

We can get through this.

I know this because I study the genealogy of my family, and I know my ancestors made it through their own horrors.

There was Sarah Jane Daugherty Feathers Scott who married at nineteen, only to lose her husband in the Civil War shortly after the birth of their first child. Her three brothers fought in the same war, one for the Confederacy and two for the Union. All came home safely, but one died before the age of 20 from an accidental gun shot. Sarah later remarried and had seven more children, with four of them dying before she did. And yet, she and her second husband, Amos, took in and were raising three of his siblings the year before her death. Sarah was the sister of one of my 2x great grandmother, and her first husband was the brother of one of my other 2x great grandmothers.

Sarah’s brother Jacob was the one who fought for the Confederacy. He and his wife Julia lost two children within eighteen days of each other at a time when their home counties were in the process of seceding from the Confederacy to become what is now West Virginia.

On the other side of the family, there was John Garman and his many children. And you already know about Montcalm. 

And I can’t forget about my Great-grandfather Lang, who was an RFD mail carrier, carrying out his rounds on a mule in West Virginia. If you’ve ever been to the hollers of that state, you can imagine what that must have been like, especially in the winter.

There was my Grandpa Byrd, who dug ditches for one of the Federal works projects during the Great Depression so he could feed his family.

His father, Andrew Warren Bird (the spelling varies) and mother, Clara Olive Summers (one of my favorite names ever!) lost a child, Mary A Bird, in 1898. She was only twenty months old, and I came across her by accident when I was looking for the death record for another Byrd/Bird. It says “caught fire from open grate, never rallied.”

Every time I read that phrase, I get tears in my eyes.

Mary’s Death Registration

Still, Clara and Andrew soldiered on until Clara’s death at age 66 in 1938. Andrew lived to the age of 96, remarrying a woman 41 years his junior when he was 78, although — and I find this detail amusing — he claimed to be a sprightly 72 to Alice’s 37.

Alice’s life was a difficult one. She was first married at 15, to a fifty-two-year-old man, with whom she had nine children.

Writing that makes me cringe, though the nine children and the fact that Andrew bequeathed his land to her on his death makes me think theirs was a marriage of economical necessity.

She died at seventy-five, having married a third time, this time to someone closer to her age (only six years older).

Although she isn’t my direct ancestor, I find myself hoping her life with Andrew was a pleasant one, and that the acreage she inherited enabled her to achieve some independence after what sounds like a life of drudgery.

My parents also knew challenges, growing up in the Depression, and that experience was reflected in how my siblings and I were raised, with a big garden and two large cupboards in the basement, filled with home-canned food.

Grandma and Grandpa Byrd would come to stay for a few days in the late summer or fall to help, but we were all expected to contribute, by lugging water to the garden, stringing beans, pushing apples through a ricer to make applesauce, or washing dishes.

The first time I made and canned jelly, I was so proud of myself, feeling like I was maintaining a connection with my parents and grandparents.

Then I realized if Grandma could look down from heaven, she would be laughing at me — so smug about over a few jars of jelly.  She, along with Grandpa and my parents, would churn out seemingly endless jars of multiple varieties of jelly every year, along with applesauce, green beans, tomatoes, tomato juice, grape juice, peaches, pears, plums, and more.

So, here’s the thing: I come from a long line of resilient people. They suffered the deaths of spouses, siblings, and children, lived through wars and the Depression, and raised their children. Every generation has had its challenges, and yet, we persevere.

Your family’s story is probably similar, though you may not know its “narrative.” This might be a good time to learn some of it because research shows that such knowledge makes a person more resilient. (If you’d like to read more about this study, there’s a good artice in the New York Times. )

It makes sense. If a person knows their family’s stories, they know that there have always been difficult times, and that people — not all of them, obviously, but many — manage to find a way to survive. When we know that, it makes us more confident we will find a way through our own hardships.

We can do that best, I believe, by learning to depend more on ourselves and on each other, even though right now that interdependence with others must, of necessity, be from a distance.

Though we may not be able to deal with difficulties in the same way as our ancestors, we too will find our way through.

Also, I take heart from two of my favorite quotations.

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” — Ghandi

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead

We don’t have to do everything to fix things. We just have to do something, preferably something that takes us out of ourselves and helps others.

So, be kind. Check in with friends and neighbors.

And, for heaven’s sake, quit hoarding toilet paper and hand sanitizer!

 

The Two John Swanns — A Cautionary Tale and Reflection on Naming Traditions

This much we know for sure:

• On April 21, 1850, Edward Voce (The Engineer’s nan’s 2x great grandfather) married a woman named Sarah Ann Swann at St. Margaret’s in Leicester.
• Both fathers’ names are listed on the wedding, as well as their occupations. (I love it when they include that kind of information, although it would be even better if it were completely legible.) Both men are named John. John Voce is a farmer, and John Swann is a globe hand? Well, that’s what it looks like to me. Also, the Swann name is so poorly written, it was transcribed as “Swain.” However, if you look closely at the “n” in spinster, it looks very much like the ones in “Swann.”
• Edward and Sarah Ann are listed as being 23, meaning they were both born around 1827. She lived at Woodboy Street, he at Wilton Street.
• The marriage is witnessed by John and Louisa Swann.

Now we can find out more about Sarah Ann. Using findmypast.co.uk, I located the 1841 census record for what appears to be her family, living at Bridge End, St. Margaret’s parish, Leicester. They are listed as John (35, frame worker), Charlotte (30), Sarah Ann (14), John (13), Louisa (9), Edward (7), James (5), Thomas (3), Charlotte (4 mos.), John Showell (30, frame worker), Ann Showell (60), and Mary Hilton (45). This ticks all the boxes. Not only is Sarah listed, she’s listed as “Sarah Ann,” consistent with her marriage record. Louisa is nine, which means nine years later, when Sarah is married, she’s just the right age to serve as witness along with her father. The family lives in the same parish Sarah Ann was married from. We don’t know who Ann and John Showell are, nor Mary Hilton, but they reside in the same household. 
To climb the family tree a little further, we need to find out more about John and Charlotte Swann. We know they live in Leicester, but can’t be sure that’s where they are from because the 1841 census doesn’t give that information. Still, we know their approximate birth year, and that gives us a start.

Here’s where it starts to get a little weird. The 1851 census lists a John and Charlotte Swann in Leicester, but they live in a different part of Leicester, with different children. Google maps says Barrowden (their home) is only about 20 miles from Bridge End, Leicester, so this is possible. But Charlotte’s age is different. She’s shown as 48, rather than 40 as she should be from a census taken ten years later. And the children are Fanny, Elizabeth, and Henry, rather than the ones from the previous census. Surely at least Charlotte and Thomas would still be at home at ages 10 and 13, possibly even James at 15 and Edward at 17. So, this is probably not them, even though this John Swann is the right age. 
For a while, I had no luck finding an 1851 census for our John and Charlotte at all. But while writing this post, I broadened the age group for John a little further and played with the name a little more.
Voila! Here they are at Woodboy Street with their many children and Rebecca Wheatley, who is listed as “mother” and “widow.”

From this, we can find their marriage record, which, alas, does not contain the wealth of information Sarah Ann and Edward’s does. We can also find the baptismal record for Charlotte, which names her mother Rebecca and gives us her father’s name, Thomas. Unusually for a baptism record, it also gives her birth date. And the 1861 census shows Charlotte listed as “wife” and “married,” with no John in sight, but five of her children.

From there, the trail goes cold for both John and Charlotte, leading me to surmise John died sometime between 1851 and 1861, and Charlotte followed sometime before 1871. I believe this because in 1871, Samuel is living with his older brother.

This family tree was actually fairly easy to figure out once I began looking at it more logically, i.e. realizing that children don’t usually appear and then disappear and others take their places within a ten year period. (I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but generally such children wouldn’t share the same birth years).

It’s quite likely the two John Swanns were cousins. In fact, I believe there may have been at least one or two more, all living within ten miles of each other. It was just unusual that two were married to Charlottes.

This happens because in England, as in many countries including America, there is a tradition of naming children for their grandparents and other family members, resulting in multiple people of a similar age in a small area being named the same. Complicating this is the fact that when a genealogist first begins research on a person, they often have only a guesstimate as to their age and birth year.

Family Tree Forum provides this information on naming patterns:

English and Welsh Naming Pattern …

First son was named after the father’s father.
Second son was named after the mother’s father.
Third son was named after the father.
Fourth son was named after the father’s oldest brother.
Fifth son was named after the father’s 2nd oldest brother or mother’s oldest brother.

First daughter was named after the mother’s mother.
Second daughter was named after the father’s mother.
Third daughter was named after the mother.
Fourth daughter was named after the mother’s oldest sister.
Fifth daughter is named after the mother’s 2nd oldest sister or father’s oldest sister.

While people didn’t always stick to the pattern, names were often used again and again. Occasionally, this can be helpful, especially if one of the names is unusual like Reuben or Honora, which turned up as “Anora,” her granddaughter Eliza’s middle name.

But don’t even get me started about the number of “John Wards” in Leicestershire between 1700-1800! I’m still figuring that one out!

Genealogy Fact #2: Family Tree Branches Rarely Grow Straight — Sarah Jane’s Story

These are the facts:

• Sarah Jane Daugherty/Dougherty married Cornelius W./C.W. Feather(s) in Ritchie County, Virginia on 12 December 1861. She was nineteen.
• On 25 November the following year, she bore a son, Aldine.
• C.W. fought and died in the Civil War, leaving Sarah a widow with a child before she hit thirty.  From the record below, you can see Cornelius/C.W. registered for the draft in 1863. His gravestone conflicts with this, saying he died in 1861, but the date on the original stone is illegible. C.W. lived and registered for the draft in Ritchie County, and both the grave markers and place of the skirmish where he is supposed to have died are in Calhoun County, which borders Ritchie, so the idiosyncrasies don’t bother me. Also, the stone with the 1861 date is clearly modern, which makes its date suspect.

• Sarah Jane’s brothers also fought in the war — George and John Wesley for the Union side, and Jacob for the Confederacy.* All three returned safely.
• Tragedy struck again in 1866 when Sarah Jane’s younger brother, John Wesley, was killed by an accidental gunshot to the head.
• Also in 1866, her older brother, George, married Matilda Scott, the sister of the man who would become Sarah’s second husband. (The wedding registers for both marriages confirm this, listing parents’ names.)
• In 1869, Sarah Jane married her second husband, Amos M. Scott. The 1880 census shows them living with Aldine and four more children in Murphy, Ritchie County, West Virginia.  If we believe findagrave.com, they had three more children who didn’t live past their second birthday. The 1900 census backs this up. Actually, it says Sarah Jane was the mother of eight children, with only four living.
• Sarah Jane died of cancer in 1901. She was 59.

Hers was a short life filled with much tragedy, and I share it for several reasons.

The first is to show that it takes very little imagination to see how seemingly dry historical records — the census, birth and death records, grave markers — can document both joy or — as was more often the case for Sarah Jane — sorrow.

That census record alone is enough sadness for a single life. Eight children, four living — add in the rest, and well, there are no words for such sadness.

The second reason I chose to write about this particular story to illustrate how tangled a family tree can become as you climb its branches.

I caught Sarah Jane’s branch while searching for information on one of my 2x great grandmothers — her sister Elizabeth. I’d run out of clues on Elizabeth and so turned my attention to her siblings, hoping their records might garner additional information on their shared parents.

When I found the registry of Sarah Jane’s first marriage, I also recognized her groom’s name. Cornelius/C.W. is the brother of one of my other 2x great grandmothers, Ida Francis Feather(s). This would make Sarah Jane something like my double 2x grand aunt.

You can practically hear those tree branches tapping against each other.

But the main reason I’m telling you about Sarah Jane is because to me, these records say she didn’t give up.

After being left a young widow with a small child, she lived through the strife of having brothers on opposite sides in a terrible war, then lost one to a horrible accident.

Still, she forged forward, marrying again and beginning a new family.

She birthed eight more children, burying four before they reached the age of two. A husband, a brother, and four children — for many people, these losses would cause a self-protective hardening of the heart. And yet, fifteen years later — just a year before she died — Sarah Jane and Amos had taken in his younger brother and two sisters to raise (documented in 1900 census).

So, maybe Sarah Jane Daugherty/Dougherty Feather(s) Scott wasn’t famous. My guess is even she probably would have said she was just a girl from rural West Virginia.

I disagree.

And that, my friends, is why I wrote this post.

Some documentation for Sarah Jane’s story

Sarah Jane Daugherty/Cornelius W. Feather wedding register

Sarah Jane Daugherty Feather/Amos Scott wedding register

Aldine Feather/Luna Cunningham wedding register

Aldine Feather death certificate

C.W.Feathers findagrave.com

John Wesley Daugherty findagrave.com

Sarah Jane death registry

Sarah Jane findagrave.com

*History of Ritchie County: With Biographical Sketches of its Pioneers and Their Ancestors, and with Interesting Reminiscences of Revolutionary and Indian Times, c. 1911, Lowther, Minnie Kendall, p. 268

 

Genealogy Fact #1: A Census Is a Beautiful Thing

To the genealogist, a census is a beautiful and useful thing.

For example, here are just a few facts I’ve gleaned from these documents.

• My grandfather was earning a wage at thirteen.
• My great-grandfather was a U.S. RFD contract mail delivery man.
• The rest of my ancestors were mostly farmers, though I can also claim a few coopers, carpenters, servants and joiners.
• My 2x great-grandfather couldn’t write.
• The majority of my family members were born in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, and, later, West Virginia. But one was listed on three censuses as being born in three different states.

This brings me to my next point.

The census is not always accurate, and apparently, many census takers couldn’t spell. In addition, old-fashioned handwriting can be difficult to read, so indexes are not always correct. Still, if you find something repeated in enough censuses, you can probably accept it as fact.

It’s also useful to pay attention to neighbors because they were often the source of marriage partners. Say you have a great-grandfather named Andrew Warren Bird who was married to your great-grandmother Clara Olive Summers, and in earlier censuses you find a Byrd family living near a Summers family, it’s probably the right families, even if the names are spelled differently, and there is no Andrew listed. And if, a generation later, you discover that a Lang man married a Byrd woman, and his sister married a Byrd man, well, you’ll begin to realize just how small the marriage pool was. (Children of these two marriages are double-first cousins, and they share as much DNA as siblings.)

Something else you need to understand is that counties were divided to make new counties (and in the case of West Virginia, one state was divided to form two). You may discover a family that lived in Monongalia County in the 1840 census was in Marion County in 1850. And they didn’t move.

Alternatively, a family can be listed in once census, disappear entirely in the next, and reappear back in the same place in the following one.

Go figure.

Occasionally, someone appears in a completely unlikely place.  I have an ancestor who — after she was widowed — turned up in Oklahoma. At first I ignored that return on a search for her name because, well, she couldn’t be there.

She was. Her son-in-law was working in the oil fields, and my ancestor was living with him and her daughter.

In earlier censuses (1790-1840), women and children (and later, slaves) were listed only as hash marks, unless the woman was a widow and therefore head of the household.

Copy of 1810 Census 

Still, the census, especially the later ones can provide a wealth of information including some, but not always all, of the following.

• Name (occasionally misspelled and/or nearly illegible).
• Age (from which you can generally guess about birth year, which you can use to find other resources).
• Profession/occupation, and sometimes how many months they worked that year.
• Race.
• Value of property.
• Place of birth.
• Year married.
• If the person attended school in the last year.
• If the person could read or write.
• If the person suffered from certain infirmities.
• If their parents were “foreign-born.” In later years, this information is more detailed with the census asking parents’ place of birth.
• Relationship of the person to the head of the family.
• Whether the person was single, married, widowed, or divorced.
• The Special Schedule of the 1890 census tells whether or not the person served in the “war of the rebellion” or was a widow of a soldier, sailor, or marine. (Note: If your ancestor isn’t listed, it doesn’t always mean he didn’t serve. I have several for whom I have Civil War pension records, and they don’t show up on this schedule.)

• How many children a female ancestor has given birth to, and (this one always gives me pause) how many of those children are still alive.
• Year of immigration and mother tongue.
• The 1900 and 1910 censuses also has a separate census for “Indians.”

So, what’s stopping you? Go to this page on FamilySearch.org and see what your ancestors were doing in 1940.

Or pick any decade. You might be surprised at what you learn.