Four Years Old

My fourth blogoversary comes at the end of my “quietest” year in blogging.  Real life, mainly my job, claimed a lot of the time I would have preferred to spend on research and blogging.  I have been gratified to see that my readers and fellow genealogy bloggers are a loyal lot and have not forgotten this blog.  While my schedule does not look as though it will return to a completely normal state, I do hope to have at least a bit of weekend time for my avocations.  

I continue to read genealogy blogs and follow the research, observations, and views discussed in those blogs with interest.  To those of you who live, breathe, read and write genealogy:  You all exemplify one of the least heralded benefits of “networking”:  pure enjoyment.

The Meaning of "Finished"

“It is finished.”

The indexing of the 1940 census, that is.

Sort of.

And my laggard state, Texas, is finally fully indexed.  I think of the state as being the slow one, not the indexers.  Texas seems to have had a lot of people with bad handwriting, and I’m sure that was a challenge.  Not to mention some of those loopy Southern nicknames, the type that took root among my ancestors and elbowed out their given names.

When I saw the announcement of the completion of indexing on Ancestry, and to celebrate my semi-freedom (= not working this weekend), I decided to see whom I could find on the 1940 census.  Earlier I had found my mother’s parents and younger siblings in Baylor County, Texas using Morse and Weintraub’s Universal 1940 Census Image Viewer.

Could I find my mother?  Yes.  But I wasn’t so sure that I would be able to at first.  When I clicked on “Search the 1940 Census,”  the only choices that appeared under the state of residence were All, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine, Nevada, and New York. 

Then I tried going to Search, Census and Voter Lists, 1940 United States Federal Census, and there the choices for state of residence were All, Delaware, and Nevada.

“All” it was, then.  When necessary, I could still use the state of birth to limit the number of results.  And on the third page of results, there she was - Madeline Roberts - living with her first husband, Howard C. Roberts (entered as Harry C. Roberts) and her brother Harrison Moore in Visalia, Tulare, California.  I had not expected them to be living there; I remembered her talking about what an awful place Visalia was, and had mistakenly thought that she, my father (her second husband), and I had lived there when I was too young to remember.  Apparently not.  

I then found my father with his parents and all of his siblings who were living in 1940, including his sister, divorced from her first husband, and her daughter.  Other Brinlees were a little harder to find, because the name proved to be a spelling challenge.  Using Soundex brought up my father’s uncle Austin Brinlee (“Brenlee”), and there was my brickwall great-grandmother, Susan Brinlee.  The column for “Other income” was marked “Yes” - that must have referred to her Confederate Widow’s pension.  And her age was shown as 84.  

How interesting.  Well, her age had been shown as 73 in the 1930 census.  But on the 1920 census it was 50, and on the 1910 census it was 41; moreover, the December 1891 marriage license for her and Hiram Brinlee gave her age as 23.  In a letter appended to her Confederate Widow’s pension application, written on 10 September 1929, she admits “I have lost my age I am some where in 60 I am not 75.”  While most researchers stick to the 1868-1869 time frame, some quote a family Bible for the date of 4 April 1856 for her birthday.  I suspect that date was entered in the Bible some time between 1930 and 1940, and that by 1940 it was taken as an accepted fact.  However, no one bothered to do the mental math that would have made her 52 when her last child, Cecil Odell Brinlee, was born on 23 September 1908 (possible but not likely).

Then there is the problem of my Great Uncle Obadiah “Oby” Norman.  I have found Uncle Oby (born 31 March 1895) on the 1900 census.  That’s it.  I have not been able to find his parents, William Henry “Jack” Norman and Sarah Jane Sisson Norman, on the 1910 or 1920 censuses.  Oby was married to Edith Watson by 1920, but I do not find them on that census.  I find Edith living alone as a boarder on the 1930 census, and Oby was not with her.  I find her on passenger lists going to Honolulu Hawaii on 29 March 1930 and returning to Wilmington, California on 6 April 1930 and still Oby is not with her.  

And the 1940 census is more of the same.  I find an Edith Norman of the right age (40; “my” Edith Watson Norman was born on 2 July 1899), born in Texas, and living alone; she is listed as married, with the “M” lightly crossed out and the 7 added to indicate that no spouse was living with her in the household at the time of the census.  I have tried some variations for Uncle Oby, but with no success so far.

Where was Uncle Oby?  There was a time when I thought that Uncle Oby’s absence in 1930 might have meant that the couple had experienced some strains in their marriage following the death of their only child in 1928 and were separated.  However, my Uncle Bill reported that Uncle Oby was an itinerant preacher (probably Primitive Baptist) and that he was shattered by Aunt Edith’s death in 1956.  So the chances are that Oby was just off somewhere preaching....  But why the heck can’t I find him on any census after 1900?!!!

So, even without being able to fine-tune searches by state of residence, my searches on the 1940 census are turning up some information.  But some mysteries still remain.

How to Spot a Genealogy Impostor

I am not sure why someone who is not a genealogist would want to pass himself/herself off as one, but here are some surefire signs to help spot any potential impostors:

A genealogy impostor:

Thinks a Flip-Pal is someone who helps a gymnast practice.

Thinks Tom Jones the Rock Star is a singer.

Thinks a “Keep Out” sign at a graveyard means what it says.

Thinks Fold3 is a brand of laundry detergent.

Thinks Samford might be a school in California.

Thinks pedigree collapse is caused by really big storms.

Thinks an online tree is, well, you know, a picture of a tree on the Internet.

Thinks a brickwall ancestor was a mason.

Thinks naturalization is what happens when you stop dying your hair.

Thinks that genealogical research has something to do with shaky leaves.  

I Got my Invitation for Ancestry DNA

And Gmail put it in the Spam folder.

So I didn't see it until today.  When it's too late.

Still pouting....

SNGF: Sayings Around the World

Here is Randy Seaver’s (Genea-Musings) latest Saturday Night Genealogy Fun:

1)  Find some of your favorite sayings, aphorisms, jokes, etc. They can be genealogy-related, or not.

2)  Translate them into Latin using Google Translate (http://translate.google.com/?hl=en&tab=wT).

3)  Share them with us in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook status line or Google Plus Stream post (impress your non-genealogy friends with your Latin skills!).

I decided to translate a saying that I learned in a Czech class. The teacher was actually Moravian, and said that this was a typical Moravian saying (“You can tell it’s Moravian because it’s super-correct Czech”).  I took the English saying and had Google Translate put it into Latin, Czech (it didn't come out quite the same as the original saying I remember), and Georgian.  None of the translations seems to get the last part right, but here goes:

This is something you would say about a person you do not trust:

Si verba ponte ire nolim eam.

Pokud se jeho slova most, nechtěl bych jít na to.

თუ მის სიტყვებს იყო ხიდი, მე არ მინდა სიარული იგი.

Not Too Tired to Browse

the 1940 census, that is.

So enough whining and pining for my ancestors.  I have at least been able to spend a few hours of quality time with them since the 1940 census was released on 2 April.

My approach is to start with Texas counties where I know my parents’ families lived, especially counties with smaller populations.  Not all of them would be living there in 1940, of course, but I can  probably count on quite a few of them still being there.  

My father, his parents, and many of his siblings should be in Fannin County, though some of his older siblings might be in other Texas counties and even in other states.  Other counties to check will be Collin, Hunt, and Grayson.

Many members of my mother’s family, possibly including her and her first husband, may have started to move to California around this time; I am not really sure when the exodus from Texas started, but I would guess around the late 1930s or early 1940s, and I know that my older half-brother was born in California in 1945.  However, I was pretty sure that there would be any number of relatives still living in Baylor, and on this score I was correct.

Using Steve Morse and Joel Weintraub’s 1940 Census ED Finder page, I started at the beginning of the Enumeration Districts listed for Baylor County, 12-1. I made it through 30 of the 46 pages and did recognize many names of families that I knew when I lived there, but did not find any relatives.  The second night I decided to search on the last ED listed (12-7), since the lower-numbered ones appeared to be for the town of Seymour and I knew that my relatives lived on farms outside of town.

Bingo.

Of the 26 pages for ED 12-7, I downloaded 10.  

The first family I found were actually not direct relatives, but the family of my half-brother’s grandfather, Officer Roberts.  The other people shown in the household were one of Officer’s daughters (my brother’s aunt) and two grandsons whose parents (my brother’s uncle and his wife) had died a few years previously.  Officer was widowed by this time and would die not long after the census, and my mother and her husband would then take the two boys in.

The next family to be found were my mother’s parents and her three youngest surviving siblings (the youngest sibling died in the early 1930s).  I was surprised to see that my grandfather Kirby Moore was listed not as a farmer, but as a laborer for some kind of county project.  It did not surprise me that my grandfather received schooling only through sixth grade, but it did surprise me that my grandmother finished high school (though it was reported that her father was anxious to see that his children received a good education, including music lessons, my grandmother was still a child when he died and the family fortunes may have suffered after his death).

Kirby and Eula Moore in 1940

Other finds were relatives of my mother’s mother, several families who married into my mother’s family, the family of the father of one of my friends, and the family of the stepfather of another of my friends (these last two were on the same page, which was only three pages from my grandparents - perhaps we were fated to be friends).

Not bad for a start.  My next steps will be to finish browsing Baylor County, check the Lancaster area of Dallas County (where many of my mother’s aunts, uncles, and cousins would probably still be living), and then go on to Fannin and nearby counties.  

(And there has been other genealogy-related activity as well.  A researcher with whom I have corresponded in the past sent me the link to a newspaper article on Chronicling America with a fabulous story about my great-great grandfather Spencer Moore - stay tuned!)

Memorable Quotes from Thomas Jones

... at the Fairfax Genealogical Society Conference I attended this weekend:

“My genealogical program of choice is Microsoft Word.”

Mine, too.  Though I copy a lot of what I put down into the notes page on my Reunion program.  He explained that there are just so many things you can do in Word - timelines, tables, etc.

“It would be extremely hypocritical for me to talk about organizing your office” (with just the hint of a beginning of a grin).  You could hear the intake of breath in the audience, followed by chuckles.  Take comfort, fellow slobs - even the great ones struggle with those piles of paper!  

In response to the question “So Ellener married 3 times?’  -- “So far....”

Other awesome things from the Conference:

Great presentations - attended all of Thomas Jones’ presentations (and I think I’ve only seen one of them before), two of Dear Myrtle’s (she’s just amazing - so informative and inspiring and makes genealogy so much fun (and funny!)), Chuck Mason’s “Defining the Problem and Mapping the Research Plan” (I so have to pay serious attention to this and get my act together), and Pam Sayre’s “Effectively Using NARA’s Finding Aids and Website” (brilliance and energy in action - when she explains how to “drill down” in the website and shows two or three different ways to attack a search on the website, it’s awe-inspiring (and would be overwhelming if she didn’t have great notes in the presentation summary)).  

I’m finally getting my autosomal DNA testing done with Family Tree DNA!  Bob McLaren did a mini-presentation on DNA testing for genealogy on Friday night and announced conference sale prices for Family Tree DNA.  So on Saturday I sat down at Bob’s booth, did the swabs, filled out the info, and out it will go.  Plus I’m going to see if my male Moore cousins will do the 67-marker test.

Won a door prize - a subscription to Archives.com!

It was soooo wonderful to have a genealogy weekend.

I miss my blog.

I miss my fellow genealogy bloggers and commenters and research cousins.

I miss my ancestors.

I will be back.

SNGF Limerick

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings has issued a Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge that has temporarily brought me out of my hole: 

1)  Make up a limerick about genealogy - it should be A-A-B-B-A in rhyme (don't worry about iambic pentameter and all that).  So here goes:

There once was a family named Floyd
Whose descendants are really annoyed
That despite spats and suits
Those irascible coots
Have left us of clues quite devoid.

Thanks, Randy!