Year: 2017

I have a breaking genealogy update for you! This is less than an hour old for me. I was so excited, I just had to share it.

The Parkin Children in 1905

This is an update to the entry I wrote about the Parkin Children in 1905. I concluded that entry by assuming the three youngest Parkin children were living in an Orphan’s home but couldn’t be sure. I did go the long way around to that answer. This afternoon, I was reading my Facebook groups and a helpful member posted that the images were now available on FamilySearch to everyone. Well, alright then, let me put down my lunch and go look, STAT!

Finding Them Again

The great news is I was able to just go right to the transcription from before. The images were already digitized on FamilySearch, just not viewable outside a research center.

From the image, I can definitely say the children were living in the Orange Orphan Society in 1905. I believe they fudged Hazel’s age to get her in since children 10 and under only were allowed. Hazel would have been 10, maybe even close to 11 at the time.

Excuse Us but you were in the middle of a Do-Over? Bright Shiny Object Distracted you?

Well, technically yes. However, I had already done the Parkin children in my Do-Over so technically, I don’t feel bad! Actually, I will go back for everyone that I have a 1905 New Jersey State Census citation for and update their information. Since the database now has images, the citation has to be written slightly different to include the fact that there is an online image.

…

What is it? You definitely want to say something else.

Okay, so if I’m being completely honest, and I try to always do that… Okay, I looked up the father of the Parkin children. I was curious, I jumped ahead. Even though technically he’s further down on my Do-Over list. I know you guys will agree with me it was okay to jump ahead a little bit.

Guys, I think the oldest Parkin child, Anna M. Parkin, might have lived to at least 1905! There at the last entry of the Parkin household is May Parkin, born May 1893. Anna Parkin only showed up on the 1900 US census for me so far, but in that census her birth date was listed as May 1892. This could be her with her father, uncle and grandmother in 1905. How exciting! There might yet be a lost branch of the Parkin family tree.

One of the things I’ve been trying to do with my Genealogy Do-Over is to fill in blanks I missed before. One of those big blanks is the state census records. For my Mom’s side, I’m not even sure if there were state censuses taken in Rural Kentucky or Virginia. I’m going to look and be sure though. My Dad’s side is much easier because I know New York and New Jersey had state censuses. This week I’m going to highlight what I would have missed if I didn’t look at the 1905 New Jersey State Census.

We have to start in 1900

The above screenshot shows the Parkin family in the 1900 United States Census. Your eyes don’t deceive you, the census shows them as the John Walter household. This is the family though, and it took me years to find them under John’s middle name instead of his surname. Here you can see all 4 children with their parents. We have Anna who is the oldest, Hazel and Jennie who are close in age and the youngest Walter who is just under a year old.

The family is living in Newark, New Jersey at the time of the census. John’s family is living nearby in East Orange, New Jersey. Jennie’s family is unknown to me at the time. In the 1880 Census the family was living in Baltimore, Maryland but I have found no sign of them after that.

The 1905 Census

I first started looking for the Parkin family in 1905 by searching for them by name. This family is filled with very common names, except for one. That one unique name is Hazel. Hazel is the reason for most of my finds in this family. If it wasn’t for Hazel, I might not have looked twice at the following record.

Notice my caption says alleged. I can’t be sure that these are my Parkin children. First off, I’m not looking at the actual record, just a transcription. Second, the ages are a bit off. I don’t have a place of birth and there are no relationship indicators. This is probably one of the most sparse records I’ve ever looked at.

I was curious on how to figure out what was happening here, but I didn’t know where to start. Like anything else you do, you have to start with what you have in front of you.

I took the name at the top of the household and tried to search for it in both 1900 and 1910 to see if Sarah and Henry were at the same place. My thinking was that if they were running a children’s home, they might have been listed as doing it in another census. I couldn’t find them in either census year by using the index search and I didn’t know where to start on a page by page search.

My next step was to see if I could find them listed in the city directories for 1905 because that would give me an address. That was the one place I was positive they were. The transcription gives no other information but I had another option. Using the information in the citation, I did a catalog search for the film number on FamilySearch to see what else I could find out.

Thank You FamilySearch for your Catalog

FamilySearch’s catalog is one of my favorite resources. You can drill down exactly where every piece of information you are looking at came from. You might not always like it or understand it, but the information is there. I might have had to search all the city directories before hitting the right town if I just looked at what I saw in the transcription. It was great to see that only a few towns were listed for this film number and one jumped out at me. I knew that John’s family lived in East Orange and so I thought that would be a perfect starting point. Truthfully, I was glad not to see Newark listed. Newark is a big city and I wasn’t looking forward to looking for a needle in that haystack!

Orange Directories

Looking at the city directory, I was able to see a Mrs. S. T. Horton was a matron at 197 Harrison, East Orange. There was also a Henry B. Horton who was an attendant at 197 Harrison. Yes! More information, but I still don’t know what this place was. The first thing I like to do when I reach the end of where my known information drops off is turn to my friend Google. Lucky for me, I found out that at one time 197 Harrison Street was the Orange Orphan Home. This information was found on numerous Message Boards on Ancestry.com’s forums. There was lots of talk from people whose relatives had worked there and others who lived there.

Google Books even has a 1921 copy of the American Medical Directory. There I found an entry for the Orange Orphan Home, which was established in 1854. None of this tells me why the Parkin children were living at the home in 1905, especially given their father was alive and living with his mother in 1910. Their mother doesn’t appear with the family again in census records, so I assume she must have passed away between 1900 and 1905. Also, the oldest child Anna Parkin was last spotted on that 1900 US Census also, so I fear that something happened to her also.

Conclusion and Plans

This information would be unknown to me if I hadn’t looked at the 1905 State Census. In 1910 the children were living with family members. Jane and Walter were living with their grandmother and Hazel was living with an Aunt. In 1920, Hazel was married and her brother and sister were living with her. Jane/Jennie married my Great-Grandfather Clifford Redford in 1923 and I’m still looking for what happened with Walter. I have no record of him after the 1930 US Census.

My plans are to find the death records for John Walter Parkin and his wife. Without a clearer date for their death, it might take a few tries to get them. I’m hoping that the more I work the Genealogy Do-Over on this family, maybe I’ll pick up some more information to help me out. My current strategy of starting from me and working backwards means that I still have plenty of family members that Anna might have been living with.

I’ll be sure to keep you informed!