This is the 1880 census image I’ve been working on for quite a bit. Not that I don’t know who everyone is or where they go. I do indeed know all of them. It’s just that because I am re-verifying information, I sometimes come back to this page.
As many times as I’ve looked at this image, and seen all the Mays families next to each other, there is something I’ve always missed. Family number 115 there. Morgan Carter. He’s right there smack dab in the middle of a Mays family sandwich. That sandwich includes the Gillam family at the top by the way. It just so happens that family contains Random Relative #1189, Dorothy/Dorthula? Gillium. So that’s why I’m once again back to this image. However, now I’m distracted by Mr. Carter there.
What are the odds that he’s just a random neighbor sandwiched between all those Mays folks. Sure since Anna is the patriarch of the family and the others are offshoots of her family, it’s possible that when they moved off Anna’s farm, they bought land nearby or from her even. (Kentucky, I need a genealogy trip to you like a need an Eggo Blueberry Waffle). I checked the 1870 and 1860 censuses. He’s not next door to Anna in 1870 but he is in 1860. Weird that it would work out that way but I guess it just depends on which direction the enumerator was going.
I watched a free webinar on Ancestry that I’ll talk about in an upcoming entry. It was talking about cluster genealogy. It wasn’t until I watched that video that I realized I practice it all the time. I didn’t put it into practice because of a brick wall or unending mystery. I put it into practice because of families like this. In my Kentucky and Ohio families, it’s more often then not that I find whole pages of ancestors in the census instead of just one family in a town. It’s such a contrast to my Dad’s family where I look for one family in Brooklyn and I’m lucky if I find them.
So I imagine I’ll end up back here at Morgan Carter eventually. Carter is a surname in my tree in relation to this area. I just haven’t traced it this far back yet, or in some cases this far forward. It’s a surprise to me that I ever get anywhere in my research with how often I change directions!
I’m headed to Ohio for the weekend, a wedding, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to update Monday. I have tons to update though. Once I get on a roll I can’t seem to stop. ^.^
