I noticed something weird in the Places tab in Family Tree Maker the other day. It seems that Brooklyn has malfunctioned. I thought at first it was because I added the street addresses to the description field for many of the census and residence facts in my file. However, it didn’t do the same thing for Caldwell, New Jersey. To test, I moved the street address to the beginning of the places field, but that didn’t solve the problem either.
I tried to merge all the different Brooklyn entries using the Merge Two Places option. That did nothing. The places won’t merge.
Is this a leftover side effect from my corrupted file? The problem does not appear on my Original file, so I can’t imagine what I did to make it happen. I’ll let you know if I figure out how to fix it!
P.S. I’m still working on the next part of my Redesigning my Chaos series. I’m having a hard time pinning down a banner I like. It’s coming along though and I’m really anxious to get new design around here.
I’ve been indexing and searching the 1940 index since Monday. I’m sure plenty of you have too. For me, I wasn’t in a huge rush to see the images because obviously it’s another 10 years before another census is released. However, I was still excited to see the images! So I tried first thing and of course, there was an overload. As a website designer I’m very familiar with website overloads and slowed servers. So I was a bit disappointed in that, but decided to just try again on Tuesday.
The images are going up in many different places, the official 1940 US Census site, Ancestry.com, FamilySearch, and My Heritage. There are probably more, but those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. For me, I’ve been mostly using the My Heritage site. It works best for my needs and it’s been super fast. Even in full screen view. So because of that I’ve been able to find all my grandparents and Great Grandparents in the 1940 Census already. Which is what I was hoping to find most. I’ve got some more generations in certain (more rural) parts of the country, but for now I’m just going to share my Grandparents and Great-Grandparents.
William L Moore, Llewellyn T Moore, William T Moore ((1940 U.S. census, population schedule, NARA microfilm publication T627, roll 2340. Essex County, New Jersey. West Caldwell township, ED 373, sheet 02-A, family 38, William L Moore; digital image, My Heritage (http://www.myheritage.com).))
Jane Parkin-Redford, Florence Redford ((1940 U.S. census, population schedule, NARA microfilm publication T627, roll 2341. Essex County, New Jersey. West Orange township, ED 393, sheet 01-A, family 9, Clifford Redford; digital image, My Heritage (http://www.myheritage.com).))
My grandma actually was picked for the additional questions. Nothing new learned, but it feels like a win for some reason! She’s not the only one who got picked. I have a few more.
William H Mays, Iva Belle Moyer-Mays, Stanley Mays, Ralph Mays ((1940 U.S. census, population schedule, NARA microfilm publication T627, roll 3041. Clermont County, Ohio. Monroe township, ED 015, sheet 17-B, family 367, William H Mays; digital image, My Heritage (http://www.myheritage.com).))
Interesting enough, the mysterious Ralph Mays was picked for the additional questions. Ralph has always been a special family member. I’ll have to write a post about that sometime.
Marshall Howard Taylor, Lula Applegate-Taylor, Emogene Taylor and siblings ((1940 U.S. census, population schedule, NARA microfilm publication T627, roll 3041. Clermont County, Ohio. Washington township, ED 029, sheet 05-A, family 84, M H Taylor; digital image, My Heritage (http://www.myheritage.com).))
database link: none, they haven’t been added to the website database yet
This is the most interesting because I wasn’t looking for my Grandma Emogene and her parents here. I had actually looked for them in Bracken and Pendleton Counties in Kentucky first, but didn’t find them where I thought they were (or the usual folks to be honest). So I was looking for Moyers in the Washington township area of Clermont County, Ohio. To my surprise, BAM, there was the Taylors, in the midst of where I usually find Moyers. I knew the family must have eventually moved to Ohio, otherwise how would Grandma Emogene have met Grandpa Stanley? However, I didn’t know she was as young as she was when they moved. It really puts things into a new light. So now I have new questions about them:
Why did they move between 1935 and 1940?
Where did the other Taylors disappear to in 1940? I didn’t see them either.
Now, I haven’t delved back into the Taylors yet since my cleanup project, so I’ll have to see if there’s a mass exodus of the family, or if it was just a family losing a lot of it’s numbers and not having as many children as they used to.
So there you go! That’s all my Grandparents and Great-Grandparents.
My 1940 Census Cheat Sheet
Here’s a cheat sheet for anyone who is interested but doesn’t have my family tree memorized. (I don’t know why you would but I wanted to say that. ha) The checks stand for those that I’ve found and the red circles with the line through them are for people who were deceased before the census was taken. I don’t have exact death dates for a lot of my mother’s Mays side, but their birth dates were in the early 1800’s so it’s a common sense judgement call on my part.
I want to thank the US Census Bureau, The National Archives, FamilySearch, and My Heritage for all the hours of entertainment and research they’ve given me this week! I was on a bit of a vacation so it was destiny I guess that everything worked out where I could devote so much time to indexing and researching!
I know I’ve suspected it before on my Taylor lines, but I’ve never actually found the records to prove a double wedding until now. Only this isn’t my Taylor line, but my Moyer/Evans line.
click for larger size
On October 17, 1901, brothers James Franklin Evans and William P Evans (they aren’t added to the website yet, still gathering their details), married twin sisters Nora and Cora Fiscus in Clermont County, Ohio. ((Probate Court, Clermont County, Ohio, “Marriages, 1801-1910”, 1899-1903, vol 26, p. 350, no 700, J F Evans-Nora A Fiscus; Family History Library, 35 NW Temple Street Salt Lake City, Utah 84150.)) ((Probate Court, Clermont County, Ohio, “Marriages, 1801-1910”, 1899-1903, vol 26, p. 351, no 701, W P Evans-Cora A Fiscus; Family History Library, 35 NW Temple Street Salt Lake City, Utah 84150.))
Fun fact: James was also a twin, but his twin sister Angeline did not partake in the double wedding, she married Robert Dunbar the previous year. ((Probate Court, Clermont County, Ohio, “Marriages, 1801-1910”, 1899-1903, vol 26, p. 161, no 18904, Robert C Dunbar-Angie Evans; Family History Library, 35 NW Temple Street Salt Lake City, Utah 84150.))
I’ve recently gone hog wild on the Scotlands People website. I must admit, this time I didn’t even use the FamilySeach indexes to help me along. Probably not a smart move on my part, but oh well now!
All that matters is that I have many names to analyze for the Love family.
To start off, I’ll be using the naming pattern that I wrote about here and Irish ones found here to “guess” what the key names will be to go back one generation from my current Love family generation wall, Andrew Love.
WHAT I CAN “GUESS” ABOUT ANDREW USING SCOTTISH PATTERNS AND ANDREW’S CHILDRENS’ NAMES.
Andrew’s father is possibly named Robert.
Andrew’s mother is possibly named Jean.
Andrew’s fraternal grandfather is possibly named Andrew.
Andrew’s maternal grandfather is possibly named William.
WHAT I CAN “GUESS” ABOUT ANDREW USING IRISH PATTERNS AND ANDREW’S CHILDRENS’ NAMES.
Andrew’s father is possibly named Robert.
Andrew’s mother is possibly named Jean.
Andrew’s third son was possibly named after Andrew.
Andrew’s third daughter was possibly named after her mother, Agnes.
Andrew’s oldest brother is possibly named Thomas.
Andrew’s second oldest brother is possibly named William.
WHAT I FIGURED OUT ABOUT ANDREW’S PARENTS AND SIBLINGS FROM THE ACTUAL RECORDS.
Andrew’s father is named Robert (Scottish – 1/4, Irish – 1/6)
Andrew’s mother is named Jean (Scottish – 2/4, Irish – 2/6)
Andrew’s fraternal grandfather is named James (Scottish – 2/4)
I don’t have Andrew’s maternal grandfather yet (Scottish – 2/4)
Andrew’s third son is named Andrew (Irish 3/6)
Andrew’s third daughter is named Agnes, like her mother (Irish 4/6)
Andrew’s oldest brother is not named Thomas, but he did have a brother named Thomas. (Irish 4/6)
Again Andrew’s second oldest brother is not named William, but he did have a brother named William. (Irish 4/6)
IN CONCLUSION
Naming patterns aren’t an exact science.
Just because the Loves stuck to more of the Irish patterns doesn’t mean they’re Irish. It also doesn’t mean that they aren’t Irish. It just means that they used family names.
Naming patterns are fun to use, but usually I only find that the parents part of them fit into my families.
Aren’t naming patterns a great way to make you look more at your family? I’m very excited to have found all 9 of Andrew’s siblings (I think that’s all!) and even his parents and grand parents. I’m once again blocked. I haven’t completely filled in Robert Love’s parents and siblings. I don’t even know if I have them all. What I do know is that in Beith parish, there is a farm/village called Hoodsyard and it’s because of Hoodsyard that I was able to distinguish my Loves from all the other Loves. Now to figure out where the other ones fit into the family!
Brown County, Ohio Marriage Records, vol 1, 1857-1860
One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned during my cleanup is to always track down what the original source was. For me, I like to know what website I got each record from, but that’s not the most important part of the citation. When you’re citing your sources, it’s most important that if something crazy happens, you could actually track down that original source again if the need arose.
For example, say one day (a horrible day) FamilySearch lost all their servers and records. (I did say a horrible day.) In light of this unfortunate (and completely fictional) incident, I decide I’m going to Brown County, Ohio to research the Carter family because that’s where I am in my cleanup. Well, I knew I last left off with Daniel Moyer and his wife Hannah Carter. However, I want to look at their marriage record for more clues, or even the same time period of marriages to track down their siblings. Well, you can’t always do that from what you get from the FamilySearch indexes. They don’t always leave reference numbers.
This is where my lesson comes in. I’ve started going to the very first images in a group of images and the picture above is what I find. This gives me the exact direct source information for the marriage record of Daniel and Hannah. With this information, I would know exactly where I’m going at the Brown County Courthouse in order to find this record in it’s original form.
Probate Court, Brown County, Ohio, "Marriage Records, 1818-1939", 1857-1860, vol. 1, p. 147, no. 7723, for Daniel Moyer-Hannah Carter;
Not that there was much information on the original record, but you never know!
