Family Newsletter Friday: 4 September 2009

Very little to report this week, since we spent most of the week preparing to take our older daughter back to college in Philadelphia and then moving her there.

Norman

The Normans are temporarily on the back burner for a week or two while I prepare a “brick wall background” on Susan Elizabeth “Lizzie” Smith (Bonner Brinlee) for the brick wall workshop of the Fairfax Genealogical Society this month.

Smith

In preparation for the above brick wall workshop, I am doing a census work-up: all Susan, Elizabeth, Elisabeth, Lizzie, S., E., and L. Smiths born between 1866 and 1870 on the 1870 and 1880 censuses, both those residing in Tennessee and those born in Tennessee. Later I will try to correlate the Smith families that I am able to identify and sort them into groups based on how well they fit based on what I know of Lizzie. There will probably be three groups: good fit, possible, not a very good fit. Some of the criteria for a good fit will include parents born in North Carolina, low economic status (value of property or a family headed by a widow, for instance), good name fit (if a Susan on one census is a Lizzie on the other census, for instance, or a Susan E.), and so forth. So far the “poor fit” families are only those that are obviously well off or have a background that doesn’t fit very well (born in Ireland, for example). Most of the families will come under “possible,” but at this point (I have done most of the families for the 1870 census) I do have a few good candidates that I will discuss later. I will also send off for the Social Security applications of the two of Lizzie’s children who appear on the SSDI.

Favorite word encountered on the census in this project: “Farmeress.”