1880 Census-Buffalo Bill Cody

The 1880 census finds Buffalo Bill Cody living in North Platte, Nebraska with his wife and family. Not many in 1880 are listed as Actors and Cattlemen, but Cody was in the complete enumeration.

Also in the Cody household are his sister and his neice--remember if you can't find your ancestor or relative in a census always consider looking in the households of other family members.

You can search for your own ancestor in the 1880 census. Of course your relative probably was not a cattleman and an actor--unless you are related to Buffalo Bill Cody.

1920 Census--Charlie Chaplin

1920 finds Charlie Chaplin living as an actor in California. He is an alien, not because he landed on an UFO, but because he was born in England.

Search the 1920 Census for your own ancestor at Ancestry.com--maybe you'll find out they were aliens!

Clarifying Clara

I wrote "Clarifying Clara" long before the Missouri Death Index and images came online, but the article still makes valid points about how a record can be analyzed.

It is also important to note that a record can easily contain errors--the birth place of Clara's father, William Rhodus/Rhodes is most likely Tennessee and not Kentucky. The birth place of Matilda Jones, the mother, is likely Missouri and not Kentucky either.

Clara is my wife's great-grandmother and I'd love to hear from anyone else researching this family.

Get Some Culture

Do you know enough about your ancestor's culture in order to research him or her effectively? It is very easy to make incorrect conclusions when we assume our ancestor would make decisions the same way that we would. Our upbringing, educational level, and personal experiences make a significant impact on how we make decisions. Our ancestors had different experiences from us, lived in a different time, and a different educational experience.
All this impacts how they made decisions.
Get Some Culture on our site discusses some ways to learn culture and common social practices so that we don't create more brick walls than we already have.

My now wife is the late grantee

Terminology can get genealogists in all kinds of trouble--if for no other reason that misinterpreting something can easily lead us down the incorrect road and convince us there is a brick wall when the problem lies with us.
A while back we posted an article on our site with some basic legal terminology useful to genealogists.
Remember: "my now wife" doesn't mean I have had more than one.

1930 Census-Gallo Brothers

CNN is reporting the death of Ernest Gallo at 97. The image to the right is from the 1930 census for the family, a few short years before the winery was founded. As the slogan used to be they "will make no wine before it's time."

Search for your own family member in 1930, whether it's time or not.

1930 Census--Lucille Ball

Knowledge of the family structure is always important. By 1930 Lucille Ball was living with her mother Desiree and her stepfather Edward Peterson. While Ball was enumerated under her birth name, some individuals are occasionally listed in the census with the same surname as their step-father. You can search for your family member in 1930, but make certain you have their correct last name and are aware of any changes in their family structure.

1930 census--Liberace

He probably could play some piano by 1930, but I bet the candles weren't on the piano yet. And his first name was Walter. Liberace is enumerated with his parents and siblings in the 1930 census in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. You can search for your family member in 1930, regardless of whether they can play the piano or not.

No Sandra Day O'Connor in 1930

Sources indicate:


"Sandra Day O'Connor was born on March 26, 1930 in El Paso, Texas, the daughter of Harry A. Day and Ada Mae Wilkey Day, but grew up in southeastern Arizona on a cattle ranch owned by her parents."

We cannot find her--either here with her parents or with either set of grandparents. Of course, the former Supreme Court Justice is not missing any more, but one wonders why she was not enumerated in the census as she technically should have been.

Just something to think about when you can't find your in the 1930 census index .

Where was Jimmy Hoffa in 1930?

No one may know where he is now, but we do know where Jimmy Hoffa was in 1930--living with his mother in Detroit, Michigan. Even if you don't know how your ancestor met his demise, you can search the 1930 census index for your ancestor for him to see where he was hanging out in 1930.

After the Marriage...

After a marriage, sometimes there is a divorce. Contrary to what some would have us believe, divorce and marital problems have been happening for a very long time. A recent article on our site discusses divorce records and how to search for them.

You may be surprised to find an ancestor divorced and what those records contained. These records should be a part of every search.

Proof of Marriage

One doesn't to get married to reproduce---theoretically we could have no marriage records for our ancestors. Fortunately, most of the time we do. A recent article posted to our website discusses the main types of marriage records and ways to search for them:

"I know they were married, but I cannot find it. They had to get married; after all they had children. Well . . . not necessarily. Usually a marriage precedes the children. It is finding the record of that marriage that sometimes creates headaches for the genealogist. "

The rest of the article is in our article archives.

1930 Census--Rock Hudson

Rock Hudson was not born Rock Hudson. Raymond H. Scherer is enumerated in Cook County, Illinois in 1930 with his parents Raymond Scherer and Katherine Scherer. Even if your relative was not an actor, make certain you are rock solid with their name before you search the 1930 census index for your ancestor at Ancestry.com.

A Young Blue Eyes in 1930

His eyes were blue in 1930 (there were no contacts to change your eye color back then), but it would be premature to call him "old Blue Eyes" when he was only 14. This 1930 census enumeration for Frank Sinatra and his parents finds them in Hoboken, New Jersey. Search the 1930 census index for your ancestor at Ancestry.com and remember---it's not necessary to know the eye color to use the census index ;-)

1930 Census--Joe Garagiola

St. Louis was home in 1930 to at least two future baseball players--this one appeared for a short time as a host on the Today Show. Joe Garagiola is enumerated in 1930 with his parents, John and Angeline Garagiola, at 5446 Elizabeth Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri. He like neighbor Yogi Berra was of Italian extraction. You can search the 1930 census index for your ancestor at Ancestry.com but he's probably not enumerated as a baseball player or a talkshow host.

From Lawrence to Yogi Berra--1930 Census

The 1930 census finds future

baseball great Yogi Berra enumerated as Lawrence Berra with his parents in St. Louis. Search the 1930 census index for your ancestor at Ancestry.com and remember that your ancestor's name in 1930 might not have been the name by which you knew him. Census takers occasionally use nicknames, but typically in 1930 that is not the case.

1930 Census--formerly known as Marguerite Johnson

Well known author Maya Angelou was not always May Angelou. In 1930, she was Marguerite Johnson, living with her grandparents in St. Louis where her grandfather is listed as a real estate dealer. Search the 1930 census index for your ancestor .

1930 Census--John Dillinger

The 1930 census finds John Dillinger living at the Indiana State Prison in LaPorte, Indiana.

Interestingly enough, he and the fellow inmates do have an occupation listed.

Search the 1930census index for your ancestor ---hopefully they are not working as shirt shop machine operators in LaPorte, Indiana.

Genealogy Computing Week Starts--Galesburg, Illinois

We have started our 9th annual Genealogy Computing Week at Carl Sandburg College in Galesburg, Illinois. Today was DeedMapper--how to use it, and how to enter and interpret deeds in metes and bounds.

Upcoming days include:

• Military Research Online (Tuesday)
• Preserving, Publishing and Promoting Your Research (Wednesday)
• Using Genline for Swedish Genealogy Research (Thursday and Friday)
• Using Ancestry.com (Saturday)

As of today (Monday night) we still have openings. Registration can be done by phone with a credit card by calling 1-877-236-1862 (ext. 5260--Nancy in our registration office). Those who wish to pay by check can pay before the workshop starts in our registration office which opens at 8:00. Workshops start at 9:00. If you call late the afternoon before the workshop, Nancy can tell you if there is still room and you can sign up the morning of the workshop before it starts. Any questions can be sent to me at mneill@sandburg.edu

More details on the workshops can be found at http://www.rootdig.com/sandburg.html

Chicago Voters

Voter registration lists are an excellent genealogical resource when they can be located. The image shown here comes from voter's registration lists from the late nineteenth century in Chicago. These have been indexed and are on Ancestry.com. The article contains complete image samples. These records are helpful for tracking movements and also include date/place of naturalization for those voters who were naturalized citizens. Of course in these records from the nineteenth century, women are not included. If you don't know why, a review of American history is in order.

Can You Read it?

This comes from a deed

in Kentucky in the early 1800s. Hopefully it's not too hard.

What does that look like?

My forebear John Rucker revieved a patent in Spotsylvania County, Virginia in 1727. Part of the image of the patent is shown here--this is the part that describes the shape and size of his piece of property. There's a neat program that will allow you to type in the description of the property and get a grapical representation of that property--Deedmapper. Deedmapper is a great tool for genealogists who work a lot with deeds that contain metes and bounds descriptions.

The image shown below (we shrunk it) shows the shape of Rucker's piece of property. The goal is to plat out the properties of his likely neighbors and determine how the adjacent properties fit together. This is not a short or an easy process, but in an era with no vital records, land records are one of the few sources genealogists have at their disposal.

More Money in Beer than in Soap

The 1860 census enumeration for Eberhart Anheuser (who was a forerunner of the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Company) indicates Anheuser was making soap not beer. Soap money may be clean, but apparently there was more money in beer, just as long as there's no soap in the beer. Search the 1860 Census for your ancestor and see if he was making soap, beer, or just earning a living in 1860.

Backwards in the Census

Have you ever considered the possibility that your ancestor's census enumeration may have his first and last name switched? The 1930 census entry for my wife's step-great-grandfather, Panagiotis Verikios in Chicago does.

The image on the right shows the enumeration and the pattern here was for the last name to be first and the first name to be last--except for Panagiotis.

You can search the 1930 census for your own ancestor as well and if you don't find him, consider switching the first and last names.

Undocumented Chaos

As genealogists looking to the past, we are forced to focus on paper records left behind by our forebears. We also use historical records and information about larger historical movements and cultural trends to reasonably infer things about our ancestor's lives. For many of us, there are times when neither of these sources or approaches is particularly helpful. Sometimes things just do not make any logical sense. There are times when our confusion stems from a misconception or ignorance we have about records, history, or cultural practices. But there are times when we've tried to learn as much as we can about the situation and perhaps have asked others more knowledgeable about the area to help us out. At times even the experts are stumped.

And so I occasionally wonder: Did some event in my ancestor's life throw the entire family into chaos?

Read the rest of the article Undocumented Chaos on our site