1940 Census – Ellwood Palmer Strode

This is the first in a series of blog posts of Photos relating to the 1940 Census.

Here is the 1940 Census for this household:

There is a couple of issues here: The wife’s name is not Louise. Louise was not 45 at the time. I will find the wife, my mother, elsewhere in the 1940 census.

Two people are missing, my grandmother and my aunt, as can be seen in the 1930 Census.

Mary L Million was a maid in 1930 and was confirmed to be by my mother before she passed away.

I confirmed with my aunt, that she was still at the above address in 1940, as she was in high school and living at home.

Here is a photo taken in 2012 of that house as recorded in the 1940 Census. Will have to work to get a better one.

However, here is a picture of the same house in 1929, which would be just before the 1930 Census as reported above.

Next to the house is a barn and this was taken in 1938, just before the 1940 Census.

In 1999, the barn looked like this.

Successful 1940 Census House Picture trip

Having spent a lot of time doing manual scanning of the 1940 Census, recording the data found, and noting street addresses when provided, We took a  “day trip” to West Chester, Pennsylvania.

I had a spreadsheet of 28 houses with street addresses from the 1940 Census. With my assistant, note taker, we roamed the streets taking pictures of the houses.

Of the 28 Addresses, 4 of them, we didn’t have time to get to, due to the distance, and it was a day trip. BUT, I also already have pictures of them. 4 of the 28 we could not locate. It may be that the house numbers changed between 1940 and 2012. We came home with 20 of the 28. Not bad.

But, we picked up 3 other houses, that I wanted to capture/

Stopped at two Cemeteries, but that’s another story, and the Church where I attended as a kid, but that will also be another story and blog post here.

Over the next couple of days, I will post this photo’s, along with the Census information and some information about the families who lived in these houses.

More to follow:

Another finding by looking at Census Images

I have probably views 1,000 Census Images over the past two weeks and that doesn’t include the 2,300 images that I have looked at in the Indexing Project.

I have been cleaning up my Census records working my way back through my file.

This evening I was looking at the 1900 Census for Waltham, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. I have seen the record in 2008, when I found my grandmother listed in that record. BUT, I didn’t really LOOK at it. I captured the data, but didn’t really look at the Census Record.

The head of the household is Rachel Carroll Allen, my great, great grandmother, along with my grandmother. She would have 13 at the time. What I missed was the 3rd person in the household. A Lodger, Bessie C Stanley. Ms. Stanley worked at the Waltham watch factory, according to her occupation.

Why is Rachel’s parents not listed? Well, Rachel’s mother had died in 1893, and her father was killed in 1896. Both worked at that same watch factory.

So, who is this Ms. Stanley?

I haven’t found the answer for sure, in black and white, yet, but the hint is in my great-grandfather’s obituary:

Waltham Daily Tribune, Waltham, Mass. Friday Evening, July 24, 1896 (page 1)

Rider Killed
Herbert Johnston Was Crushed Under Runaway
Was Learning to Cycle
Lack of experience on the machine was partly responsible for his fall.

A sad accident occurred on High street yesterday afternoon by which Herbert Johnston, a well known employee at the American Watch factory, lost his life. Mr. Johnston was a novice at the art of cycling, and had engaged a wheel for this week to learn to ride. Yesterday morning at about 11:30 he was riding along High street below the Comet Factory.

A horse belonging to F.E. Stanley, proprietor of the Stanley Dry Plate Company, and driven by his hired man, was coming along the road from Newton, when it became unmanageable and ran away, throwing the driver out. The horse ran wildly up High Street and coming behind Mr. Johnston, who was unable to avoid it, threw him from his wheel, and he was struck in the head by the horse’s hoof. Mr. Johnston was picked up and carried to the Waltham Hospital, where he died about one o’clock. His remains were immediately turned over to Undertaker Goodnow, and the medical examiner summoned.

Dr. Meade examined the remains, and pronounced the death to be caused by a fracture of the skull, causing concussion of the brain..

Mr. Johnston who is a widower lived at 112 Myrtle street with his child and his mother. He was a member of Waltham Lodge A. O. U. W. All members of the Order are urgently requested to meat at A.O.U.W. hall Saturday at 2:15 p. m. to attend the funeral of our late brother H. J. Johnston. Wear dark clothes and white gloves. A. H. Rand, Recorder.

I think the Bessie C Stanley, may be a sibling or the Stanley brothers. I don’t know this for sure, but from what I have been able to determine, the Stanley’s took care of my grandmother following this unfortunate accident.

This article mentions the same house that is reflected in the 1900 Census.

This is that house. Unfortunately, when I took my parents to see the house in 2003, it was gone.

Rachel Carroll Allen’s father was born in Ireland, according to the Census Record. According to some family letters, “Parish of Drum, Town of Borrisoleigh County of Tipperary, Ireland”

Lessons Learned–1940 Census–‘in a rush’

I think the biggest lesson learned, with the unindexed 1940 Census, that some of us are in too much of a rush to capture information about our families. We want some search engine to “find my family”, oh, and in a hurry.

I had a long, back and forth, email conversation with a colleague about the 1940 census. He is going to wait until “it’s indexed”. As hard as I tried, with some of my experiences of last week, he’s waiting.

A goal I have for this year, is to clean up my database. In March, I spent a lot of time getting ready for 9:00 AM, Monday, April 2, 2012 to have access to them. I focused on the documentation for the information I had from the 1930 Census, including Citation material. I blogged about that earlier.

Lesson Learned–1940 Census Importance of Citation

I had my genealogy database management system in pretty good shape to give me a report to work from, for scanning the 1940 Census. One report I ran, gave me the 8 most important people to find, and where I should find them.

Learning of what I needed to find the Enumeration Districts from the 1930 Census, to narrow the scanning in the 1940 Census, I found that I should be able to find 89 people, based on what I had from 1930.

On Monday, at 6:00AM, I noticed that someone said images were coming online. Not waiting for 9:00, I started my quest. I have posted some of those success stories here already.

But, the point of this message, is that the lack of indexes, hurry up and wait, has forced me so slow down and look at these images, page by page to see what or who else I might find. Folks who I may not have found in the 1930 census.

I have focused on one County in Pennsylvania. I was born and grew up in that area, still have family there, and visit when I can.

I started on my 1940 list, but as I did, I started to see names that I knew as I scrolled by, but weren’t on my list. I had a goal to get at some of those 89 people on my To-Do list.

I hit the “low hanging fruit”, those on my list, and families I know should have been there, and were. Today, I am going back, ED by ED, to “get the rest of the story”. I have looked at about 200 pages of census records and found 5 more families, while looking for those who had not been so easy to find.

I re-ran my 1930 list, removed those who I have found, removed those who have died, and my list is down to about 50, but that doesn’t include from that I have added, just by looking, page by page.

I have added 24 new people to my database, just by reviewing the census images. I have added 4 households that I found in the 1940 Census that I had not found in the 1930.

Lesson Learned: stop and return rolling those microfilms, but in the comfort of your home, page by page, pays off sometimes.  At least it did for me.

Lesson Learned–1940 Census Importance of Citations

Without the ability to use normal search engines, at this point, for locating family in the 1940 Census, I found that having relatively good Citations really helped me find folks in these images that can be scanned. I knew where to look.

I posted a number of posts on my genealogy database management software:

http://ftmuser.blogspot.com/search/label/1940%20Census

I was able to use my 1930 Data, to locate the Enumeration District for the 1940 Census. Using the Steve Morse Unified 1940 Census Tool, the identification was easy.

I used the Residence Fact for this tool. As you can see, I generated a printout, by Location, and the residence fact included the Enumeration District NUMBER so I could easily mark this page when I looked at the 1940 Census Tool. That is where I started. Who knew, who might have moved.

The Citation information, would verify for me, the ED #, Page Number, and Line Number from the 1930 Census.

That first entries Citation looks like this:

1930 U.S. census, Chester county, Pennsylvania, population schedule, enumeration district (ED) 3,  page 1-A (stamped), lines 8 to 11, Birmingham, Wilmington Pike – Family 3, John Marshall Highley, digital image, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc, (http://www.ancestry.com, 12 April 2012), NARA microfilm publication T626, roll 2019, Image: 34.0; FHL microfilm: 2341753

Within my genealogy database software, I can easily see the 1930 Census image, if I need to look at the image. For example, to verify who might have been in the household in 1930, but not in 1940.

Finding the image for 1940 may have taken a few minutes, but I had a very good start.

Here is the Citation for this person in the 1940 Census.

1940 U.S. census, Chester county, Pennsylvania,  population schedule, enumeration district (ED) 15-3, page 3-A (stamped), Birmingham, lines 31 to 34, family 49, J Marshall Highly; digital image, Archives.gov (http://1940census.archives.gov: accessed 04/06/2012); citing NARA microfilm publication T627, roll 3467

So, when the 1950 census comes around, I have a great starting point.

Lesson Learned: I had always considered a Citation useful for Others to see or find what I found, IF they looked at my research. Working in the scanning of Image for 1940 taught me that a good citation is more useful for ME.