It would be a gross understatement that I’ve recently become re-obsessed with office supplies. After making a Genealogy Binder, it was all downhill from there. Unfortunately, I was very sick all week and I’m just now coming back around. Funny how that happened. You get sick on Saturday and then by time Saturday rolls around again, you’re finally feeling human again. I hate being sick, I’m so glad it doesn’t happen often. I’m not one to sit still for long!
Before the “Great Illness of 2012”, I had started to decide what my next project was going to be, since I’m going to finish my new file soon. Okay in a couple of months is still soon, it’s been two years! There’s one thing that’s been bugging me and I figure it’s going to have to be that… I have to go back to the Mays and finish them off.
You may be a little surprised to hear me say that. However, when I got lost in the Mays’ the first time around, I was sinking fast. They’re hard to comprehend on the best of days. This project had seemed to be going on forever and most of that time was on the Mays’. So I made a decision to not go insane researching all of the Mays’ children who descended from William Mays and Frances Adkins unless I could find solid links to them. So there are four Mays children who I skipped the first go round because there was no clear (i.e. easy) connection between them and their parents. Mostly because they were not living with or next to their parents in the 1850 US Census.
To give you an idea of how many were skipped from my Original file, the ones highlighted in orange have been added and sourced in my new family file.
That’s a 9 page report. I definitely have my work cut out for me. I only hope that I can make some sense of it. These Mays’ don’t like to make it easy.
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!
Back when I first started to get my research together, I had a single 1-1/2 inch binder with all my documents in it. Then I got all those boxes of information. While I don’t have all that stuff anymore, I still have enough that it’s outgrown the original binder. So I organizedthatchaoshere. And I went ahead and set the binder aside to be used on another project someday. That day came last week. I’ve been reading a lot of organization blogs, hoping to get inspiration to make my bedroom/office into an organized workspace. This is going to take awhile to plan out, but I did get myself a good idea.
The new Genealogy Binder.
This one doesn’t have records in it. It has lists, and I know now that I need lists. I even lucked out with all those extra sheet protectors from the organization project.
Then I made my own checklist in Excel for the things I don’t want to forget that I need.
I put my Scottish naming patterns printout in the binder. Always need this one on hand!
I put my Ohio Birth Report in a single sheet protector. This way it’s not taking up cluttered space on my desk.
I even cooked up a Repository List. Though I might go ahead and type the addresses into the boxes and re-print it. That way I can fit some of those long names in the boxes without having to write super tiny.
I’m still figuring out what else to put in my binder, but I figure it will end up being papers I would like to keep out and accessible without being scattered all over my desk. I think the next thing to do is to make Genealogy Trip To-Do Lists or Vital Records checklists that I want to order.
Even though I’m coming up on the end of my family file cleanup, (which I started sometime in 2010), sometimes I just love to dig into my Original file and clean that up a little too. I just can’t seem to let it go. Am I going to always have two working files? Or will I eventually scrap the original? I just can’t decide. I don’t think I’ll ever fully delete the original file.
With all the new databases that come out on a regular basis, sometimes I want to just dig into that old file, and just test the waters out a bit. Sometimes it’s really just to see if the database is going to be a very prolific resource for my family tree. I’m never really sure if the more rural areas of my family recorded the vital records or not. I know it wasn’t mandated until the 1900s in those states, so I know it’s a toss up.
Two of the databases I’ve really been digging into is the Ohio, County Births and Ohio, County Marriages databases over at FamilySearch. I’m digging up my Ohio roots right now on my file cleanup, so I’m really able to progress. I’ve already had some of these records recorded, but only from an index at FamilySearch, so I didn’t have all the information from the original record.
Ohio Birth Report, 1856-1909
Yesterday though, I wanted a little break from the cleanup. So instead of just sitting in front of the TV watching the Housewives on Bravo, I opened up my Original file and I printed out the above report. The great thing is that I used the instructions discussed by Russ Worthington on his blog about preparing for the 1940 U.S. Census. Only I didn’t prepare for the 1940 U.S. Census.
I prepared for the Ohio, County Births database. I filtered in individuals with a Birthplace containing Ohio. Then I filtered out anyone born before 1856 and after 1909. Voila. I had an Ohio Birth Report to work from. It turned out to be 18 pages long, but my printer prints on both sides of the paper, so I went ahead and printed it out for ease of use.
After all that preparation was done, the dryer buzzed and my full day took over. Hey, I have the list though, which means now when I have some extra time, I can just bring up the Original file, take out the list and work from that. The great thing is even if I input information into my old database, I always have that up when I’m working from my new database. So I can easily find my sources and information in my old program once I get to that person in the new database.
Sure it might not make much sense to work in such a haphazard way, but then again if it wasn’t that way, it wouldn’t be me researching. It’s how I roll. That’s right, I roll back and forth over and over again.
I recently updated my “About Kathleen” page here on the blog. Reading my previous page got me thinking a lot about my views on genealogy. While writing the new page, I was trying to think of what I’m usually asked the first time I tell someone I research my family history. Which I never refer to as genealogy, because then that leads to the blank stare most times.
If you’ve ever had a genealogy discussion with the non-initiated, or even the initiated, the first question always seems to be: “Oh, what’s the most interesting thing you’ve found?”
That question makes me chuckle a little bit. It’s kind of like my sister coming home from a day at the bank and me asking her, “Who was your most interesting customer? No, I don’t want to hear about your day or the mechanics of it. Just your most interesting part.”
Am I dissing someone who asks that question? Of course not! I would never do that. Any reason to talk genealogy is a good enough reason to me. I’m definitely not saying that I want to go on a 45 minute discussion on how I dissect which records are important and which ones aren’t.
I guess my point is, that question is impossible for me to answer. I was born, raised, and still live in Southern Maryland. In this tri-county area, I’ve had zero extended family most of my life. Most of my relatives are a half day drive away. So when I started to research my genealogy, everything I found was just so fascinating. I couldn’t believe that this five person family I grew up with could branch out so far. I knew I had cousins on each side of my family, and I knew that I had two sets of grandparents. I think I saw my maternal grandma once every five years until we were old enough to travel better. Not to mention the cost of traveling for a young family who didn’t have a lot to spare.
My Grandma Emogene, her siblings and cousin
For someone who had her siblings, their friends, her own friends and that was it; Family is something that it took me awhile to grasp. I’ve read a lot of articles where people don’t understand why people research their family history. It’s in the past they say. It has no bearing on who you are. I don’t need to know about them to live a perfectly normal life.
I can say most of that is true. Except for saying it has no bearing on who you are. I am by no means a psychologist. However, I am a people watcher. I love to observe and analyze. It’s why I enjoyed jury duty so much. I actually think I have a very good perspective on how learning your family history can change your views of the world. Not having any idea where I came from, not having close relationships with my extended family until we were grown, all those factors help me to differentiate how I felt before and after genealogy.
I’ve never walked my ancestral grounds, I’ve never gone farther then the distance it takes to visit family, and I’ve never spent more money on genealogy in a year then I wouldn’t have spent on quilting fabric at the store. What I can say about learning my family history can’t really be put into words, but that’s what I’m going to try to do anyway.
I could have gone through my life never knowing anything about my family history. What you learn in your family history isn’t something thats measurable in money or fame. A lot of people think everyone who researches their family history is in it for some kind of fame seeking reasons. That isn’t so. You actually learn compassion for how hard it was to get to the point where you are today. A lot of people take for granted that the majority of Americans are educated from the kindergarten level, all the way up to high school. As early as the 1930 census, it was common for people not to be able to sign their own name. In fact, there are still people out there not able to read or write. When you think back on ancestors, who left Ireland with nothing but the clothes on their back and a skill they’d learned, you can’t help but feel proud of them. They conquered life when the odds were against them. Their only hope was in themselves and their faith. Yet these people in the past, who you’ll never know but through genealogy put you where you are today. If they had gone left instead of right, would you be the same person you are today? If they hadn’t come to America, would they or their children have survived for you to even be born?
My great grandmother Llewellyn, her brother George, and an unknown friend
So when I’m asked what my most interesting find is, I say “All of them”. I find William H Moore’s immigration interesting. I find the vast numbers of Mays ancestors interesting. I come from a world of living in the same place for all my life, so I find the Redford family’s migration to Los Angeles, CA interesting. I find the farmers just as interesting as the plumbers. The plumbers are just as interesting as the tailors. The tailors are just as interesting as the people who ended up signing their WWI Draft Card from the county jail.
The fascination isn’t in the notoriety or out of the ordinary for me. It’s the family unit and how it survives over time. I know because of my relatives that rough patches iron out. You lose your loved ones, but you can in fact carry on and survive. I know that those friends I made during school and am still friends with are as much a part of my family history as my cousin Patty is. They all make up my story.
The facts about my ancestors may not be Hollywood worthy and they may not have done super extraordinary things that made them rich or famous. What they did do was give me inspiration to do what I love and keep living my life for today and not yesterday. Yesterday is already written. It’s my decision on how to write today and tomorrow. I only hope that I’m half as much inspiration to my descendants as my ancestors are to me.
