Aunt Margaret Married in the State of Providence

I make discoveries on Mocavo.com, but like any online database provider they have the occasional irregularities.

This first entry is for my great-aunt Margaret and her husband Robert. They married in Cache County, Utah, in 1947.

The database entry is a little bit off--probably due to irregularity when merging the original database into databases at Mocavo.com. The state and year are clearly off.

In the process of writing this blog post, I searched for Aunt Margaret again and discovered there were two entries for their marriage in the Mocavo.com database called "BYU Idaho Western States Marriage Index, 1809-2013."

The first reference shown is the one for which the detailed entry is shown above. The second entry in the search results contains the information in the correct fields.  Why there are two entries for this same marriage I'm not certain.

This data was incorporated into Mocavo.com's database from the original database which is housed on the BYU website. There are not two entries for the Habben-Hutchison marriage in that database (I know because I searched).

Sometimes it pays to put names in the wrong boxes when searching. Most databases do not have issues of this type, but occasionally when databases are automatically merged into larger databases errors do happen.

Mocavo.com finds things that are already online (in addition to some databases that other sites do not have)--the value they are offering for subscribers with these already online materials is that the results are grouped together and their search engine may locate things that you've not stumbled online while doing other searches.

The incorrect marriage entry indicates my aunt was married in the state of Providence--something ironic in that.

1840 Census of Pensioners

American genealogists sometimes forget that the 1840 census does contain names of individuals besides heads of household. Revolutionary pensioners were to be enumerated on the right hand set of pages for this head of household only census.

Researchers often fail to even look at the right hand page of these enumerations.

The names of pensioners were published in 1841 in "Census of Pensioners for Revolutionary or Military Services" by the United States government.

Mocavo.com includes images of the entire book which are full text searchable (other sites may also have images of this book as well). A portion of the page of interest is shown in the image below. This transcription of the census only includes pensioners and the head of household for the household in which the pensioner resided.  It is not a full transcription of the 1840 census.

The reference to Alam in his son's household
appears on the right hand page of his
son's entry. There's a lot of white space on this
page and people often do not even
bother to look at it.

Why use the transcription when the census is available digitally? After all, aren't genealogists told to"use the original" as if no other copy of any material exists.

Not exactly and not always.

It is possible that there were transcription or typographical errors in creating this 1841 publication. It is also worth noting that the transcription was made in 1840 or 1841 when the original census may have been easier to read.

The entry for Alam Blain, the 80 year old pensioner, is contained in the household of his son with the same name in Harlem Township, Delaware County, Ohio, as shown in the image accompanying this blog post.

The transcription in the "Census of Pensioners" lists the name as starting with an "E." Itis pretty clear from the image that the name is written with an initial "A."

And of course, if this were my first reference to Alam as a pensioner, I would want to locate military and pension records for him.

Consider searching this reference for your Revolutionary War era ancestor. The spelling used in this transcription may be the one that helps you to find him.

Or her--widows who are receiving a pension are enumerated as well.

1940 Teacher College Board Report Tells Where Aunt Margaret Taught

Virtually any printed material can contain a genealogical clue.

The image in this post is part of the "Teacher College Board of the State of Illinois" from 1940. The image itself was located on Mocavo.com. 

I've known for some time that my grandmother's sister Margaret Habben Hutchison taught home economics both before and after her marriage. I also had determined that Aunt Margaret graduated from what is now known as Western Illinois University in 1940.

According to this report, Aunt Margaret actually graduated on 19 July 1940 and her first teaching position was apparently in Gridley, Illinois-in McLean County.

Alumni magazines, yearbooks and other items published by the college are places where researchers typically think to find this type of employment material. In this case, since Aunt Margaret graduated from a state university her name appeared in this annual report.

I'm pretty Aunt Margaret is listed as "absent" in the 1940 census enumeration of her parents, Mimka and Tjode Habben, in Prairie Township, Hancock County, Illinois. If this information is correct, she would still have been in college at that point in time.

I'll have to do a mental check for other family members during this time period who might have graduated from "Western Illinois State Teachers College" during this time frame for similar materials.

I am doubtful the publications extend to the early 1960s when my mother graduated from the same institution. In her case I know where she taught during her entire teaching career, so while it would be neat to see her name "in print" the information would not be any revelation.

Aerial Photographs of Churches and Cemeteries from 1955 in Illinois.

I've been playing the 1955 American Aerial County History Series from Hancock County, Illinois,  Mocavo.com. There's not just farm pictures in this publication, rural churches appear as well. 

Of personal interest was the Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church as shown below. By 1955, my own family had stopped attending this church, although my grandparents lived on a farm close enough to the church that the church could easily be seen from the front yard.

page 265 of original text

There even was a photograph of the Immanuel Cemetery in the book as well. The cemetery's growth between 1955 and today is evident (at least to me) from this picture.

page 243 of original text

Of course, no stones are readable.

Having been to the cemetery numerous times, I am somewhat familiar with it. The rectangular region on the left is virtually full and the trees that line the "back" of the cemetery (on the left, which would be the east side) are now gone. The trees on the north (in the back) are still there.

I'm reasonably certain that I've located the stone of my great-great-grandparents on the image below. My great-grandparents were not deceased in 1955, but they are buried pretty close to where the "S" appears in "Stone" below.

These images were located on Mocavo.com's digital version of this publication by searching for Immanuel as a keyword. That's why "Immanuel" is in yellow in the screen shots above.

I know these books were published for other Illinois counties, but I'm not certain which ones Mocavo.com has. But those with an interest in this time period might want to give a look on Mocavo.com and see for themselves.

Neat stuff.

[note: The black and white portions of these images were downloaded from the Mocavo.com site. The title of the database and the image numbers were retained in order to facilitate the relocation of these images. The red annotations were made by Michael John Neill on 20 February 2014--the same date as the viewing date of the images]

A 1955 Aerial Photograph of Grandpa Neill's Farm

I've seen this 1955 book of aerial photographs of Hancock County, Illinois, before but I believe that Mocavo.com is the first place that includes a digital index of the book along with digital images. I'm not certain how many of these are in the collection of Mocavo.com materials as my own personal interest in the 1955 era is in Hancock County.

The image below shows the farm of my grandfather Cecil Neill taken from a plane flying east of the farm. The book indicates the farm is in section 12, but the farm is actually in Prairie Township, not Carthage township.

I will have to take a look at other entries in the book to determine if the geographic placename listed is for the township or the mailing address (given that "Rt. 1" is a part of the entry, I'm guessing that the reference is to a mailing address). While we are only showing one image in the post here, researchers are always advised to look at other items in any publication to gain perspective on what is included in an entry.

The one thing a person never gets from pictures like this is the perspective of how level the area is. In this case, it's not level. The road in front of the house is a state highway and the driveway is at the bottom of a hill and there's an incline as one heads north (to the right in this picture).

The house is no longer standing, but the garage is, as are the two barns in the back. The picture was apparently taken before my grandfather had a silo built and also before an addition was added to the west barn (in the rear of the picture). I even think I can see the outhouse in the picture as well.

Items like these would make excellent illustrations in family history materials.