Mad About Maps

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Ancestry.com, atlas, California, Cedar Point, Central City, Columbus, family, genealogy, journey, Library of Congress, Map, maps, Merrick County, Nebraska, Ohio, Putnam County, San Francisco, Tennessee, West Virginia

For as long as I can remember, I have always loved maps.  Even from a fairly young age, I understood that a dot on a map represented something out in the world; a city, a place that I could travel to and explore.  I would consult maps whenever the family planned a vacation.  I wanted to see what roads we’d travel, and what cities we might go through.  Even for lesser journeys, I might check a map.  Our family would go to Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio every few summers, and especially as the park added more and more rides, I would check the map to find the quickest way to get to the next roller coaster.  Even at the mall, I would consult a “You Are Here” map to see how to get to the new shop that just opened.

As you can see, there are lots of coasters. It seemed like every few years, another one would open.

In my family, I typically took the task of the navigator on long trips.  I would keep the road atlas with me, and would look at it from time to time, and let whichever parent was driving (usually my Dad), know when the next turn was coming up.

In a genealogical journey, you don’t necessarily have a map to follow.  You might get some data that might point you in the right direction, but the final destination can be ever elusive.  However, maps do have their use in genealogy.  In particular, I’ve found that historic maps can be quite helpful in finding out more about the places my ancestors lived.  Today, I’m going to share with you a few resources that I’ve found helpful in my own research.  Clicking on any map will take you to its source.

Old Maps Online

From 1000 AD until the present, there are maps available from several sources that can be viewed online.  You can use a map feature to find what you’re looking for, or you can type in a place to search for it directly.  The maps show everything from topography and resources, to city streets.

This map shows San Francisco as it was prior to the 1906 earthquake. This was the San Francisco where Bill’s maternal grandmother was born.

David Rumsey Map Collection

While the maps of the David Rumsey collection can be viewed through the previous link, I wanted to make special mention of this group of maps.  Many of these maps are rare maps of North America (the map above is part of the collection).  The interface is virtually identical to that of Old Maps Online, however, I prefer the darker background of the Rumsey site for viewing.

My paternal great-grandparents migrated from West Virginia to Nebraska. Five children were born in Nebraska, and I believe their first-born, Annie died there. A draft card pinpoints the birthplace of one child in Central City, Nebraska.

Atlas of Historical County Boundaries

Borders have a way of changing through the years.  As territories became states and states sometimes spawned new states or disputed ownership of land with other states, the lines that designated where one place ended and the other began evolved.  Even within states, counties grew, shrank, were created, or disappeared.

You can view these changes on this atlas.  Choose the state you are interested in, type in a date, and you can view the borders at that time.  You have the option of also comparing them with the current county borders.  I have found it useful when trying to track down relatives when they haven’t moved, but the borders did.

My maternal great-grandparents resided in Putnam County, Tennessee, and I believe the family stayed in the same area for several generations. This is a map of the borders around the time of the county’s original formation in 1842. The black lines represent the county boundaries as of that date; the white lines indicate the current county borders.

As you can see, this map, showing the borders as of June 1, 1850 doesn’t show Putnam county. That’s because its initial formation was declared unconstitutional. I would need to look in the counties that took over the land to see where the family is. A hint on Ancestry.com leads me to believe that in 1850, they were enumerated in White county, which comprises a big chunk of southeastern Putnam county’s future borders.

In 1854, Putnam County was officially reestablished and back on the map. This map as of June 1, 1860 shows that the shape was redrawn differently than it originally looked in 1842, and its shape was a lot closer to that of its modern place on the map.

Data Visualization:  Journalism’s Voyage West

Stanford University compiled data from the Library of Congress‘ “Chronicling America” project to create this unique map.  Over 140,000 newspapers in over 3 centuries are represented.  What I like about this map is it helps me to determine what newspapers were in print for a particular place at any given point in time.  There are also links that will show where archives of these papers can be found in libraries across the country.  Best of all, several papers are available digitally and be searched and viewed for free.

Bill’s paternal great-grandparents settled in Columbus, Ohio after immigrating from Hungary. This image shows how many papers they would have had access to in 1920. There was at least one publication that was printed in both English and Hungarian. I wonder if they were subscribers.

As you can see, maps can help in our research of our ancestors.  They may give us a better view of the land as it was when they lived.  Maps can show the surroundings and give us a better understanding of how things looked before modern streets, roads, and buildings became part of the landscape.  Maps can show the changes in boundaries between counties and states, and perhaps help us track down a relative.  Maps can even be used to give us a visual representation of data that might help us discover records unlocking key clues in our genealogical journeys.  I hope that some of these resources might help you as much as they have helped me.  If you have other map resources that you have found, please share them.

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One Hit Wonders

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adventure, Ancestry.com, investigation, journey, Kentucky, Lawson, Letcher County, Newell, Whittaker

In music, a “one hit wonder” is when a singer or musical group has one chart-topping song.  They have one big hit and that’s it.  However, some of those single hits for one group have gone on to be hits for others.  Still more of them have gone on to be featured in countless collections of hits from their era, or have been immortalized in movie soundtracks.

I personally didn’t know who Bobby Day was, but say the name of his one hit wonder “Rockin’ Robin” and I not only think of the Jackson 5, I also think of one particular hand clapping game we used to play to this tune; the first verse was pretty much the same as the original, but the second was a bit different.  I don’t recall the original lyrics being “Your Daddy’s in the back yard, shootin’ them dice/your Mama’s in the kitchen, cookin’ that rice.”  And, I didn’t know that before a group called the Crew Cuts did the song “Sh-boom”  (aka “Life Could Be a Dream”) that it was a one hit wonder for a group called The Chords.  If you’ve seen Pixar’s movie Cars, then you heard this song playing as the cars were cruising the neon lit streets.

There are plenty of other examples in music of course.  However, the “one hit wonders” that I am referring to in this case are those in our genealogy.  They are children in our families that show up on a single census.  Their presence is a one time occurrence for a single decade’s list, and they are never seen again.

When going through the 1940 US Census, I was looking for a potential one hit wonder in my own family.  When I started looking into my mother’s side of the family tree, I had mentioned the tragic circumstances of her older sister’s death.  Because of when she was born, I knew that 1940 would be the only census on which she would appear.  The question remained though:  would she be on it at all?

The family lore varied a lot on when she had actually died.  Some made it sound like she was just a baby or toddler.  My gut feeling though was that she would have been older.  I made that conclusion based on the story.  If she was trying to go after a bottle of nail polish on a fireplace mantle, I felt she would need to be at least three or four to attempt to climb or reach up to the mantle.

I knew where the family should be at this point, because I was able to find birth records for both the sister and my mother in the same location.  Letcher County, Kentucky is where I started my search.

The hard part was that I didn’t know exactly in what section of Letcher County to start.  I used the 1940 Census Enumeration District Finder created by Stephen P. Morse, PhD  &  Joel D. Weintraub, PhD to show me all the districts for the county.  I then looked at the descriptions.  From the 1930 Census, I knew that my grandfather’s family had lived in Magisterial District 1, which had four possible enumerations districts that made it up.  I decided I’d have to search page by page.

In enumeration district (ED) 67-1, I saw the name ‘Whitaker’ a few times, but almost all the names were unfamiliar.  One name I tucked away for a future date to research because I thought it might be a son of Vetter Whittaker, whose name helped me link up several spelling variations on multiple censuses.  So, not finding any of my family in that district, I went on to ED 67-2.

I was eleven pages in and I almost missed it.  It wasn’t my mother’s sister, but it led me to believe I was on the right track.  It also thoroughly convinced me that somehow, the census takers had decided to make things difficult for me because once again, they were mixing things up on me again.

For the fourth time, they have spelled my great-grandmother’s name wrong! And, they got my great-grandfather’s wrong as well!

The reason I almost didn’t catch this was because both of my great-grandparents’ names are incorrect.  Manford is listed as Langford, and Thenie is listed as Dina!

So, you might ask, how do I know this is really my family?  It’s because of the twins.  However, once again, we have a gender-bending census taker, because Rolie and Trolie Lawson were actually identical twin boys!  Rolie and Trolie (or as I knew them, Uncle Roll and Uncle Troll) were not just names to me.  I knew them both growing up, and they were both down to earth with great senses of humor.

In finding my great-grandparents and two of my grand-uncles, I figured I was starting to get nearer to finding the family.  In fact, on the next page, I found another possible relative.  The name was listed as Esta, but I think it might be Delbert Estes, another grand-uncle.

After that, page after page went by without seeing another familiar name.  Then, turning to my 26th page to review, I found what I was looking for (and more):

The first family listed is my great-grandmother with her second husband, and two of my grandfather’s half-siblings (I think that the last name is Juanita, which means we once again have a census taker that is a sex change artist).  You can see that the census taker probably missed filling in one field, and he was entering things in the wrong spots.  He had to go in and make corrections, and unfortunately, his correction for Juanita made her a boy.

The final line contains the name of my one hit wonder:  Anna (Mae) Newell.  As you can see, she is the only child at the moment.  Not for long though.  You see, my grandmother was a few months pregnant by this time, and before the year was out, she would be giving birth to my Mom.

My grandfather used to tell us about how when Grandma was pregnant with Mom, she would chew ice all the time.  He would say, “All day long she would just be crunchin’ on that ice.  Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch!  Sounded like a hog chewin’ on corn!”  I guess she got over it eventually; I was told when she had one of my aunts, it was peaches that she craved.

I was glad to see Anna Mae on the census.  I had already found her birth record.  Seeing another record for her made her seem more real to me.  She had lived.  She would have been about 18 months old at the time of the census, so she would have been walking and talking.  But, I knew at the same time, this young girl would in a few years die tragically.  It was a bittersweet discovery, but one that I feel helped me make a deeper connection to the aunt I never knew.

I wonder if any of you have any one hit wonders in your family?

From Roots to a Branch

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adventure, Air Force, Ancestry.com, Bunny, genealogy, investigation, journey, military, mystery, Taylor

I found you!  Kunta Kinte!  I found you!

— Alex Haley, Roots:  The Next Generations

I remember very well watching both Roots and Roots:  The Next Generations when I was in my teens.  I think in some ways, watching the story of Alex Haley’s ancestry unfold planted some of the first seeds for my own interest in family history.  I just watched the ending of the sequel to make sure I had the quote above correct, and got to again experience the elation expressed by James Earl Jones as Alex Haley when he discovered that he had indeed found the people from which his ancestor, Kunta Kinte had been taken from.  Even more touching though, was the scene where Haley was about to leave when a young man came running up.  It turned out that this man was a long-lost cousin of his, and the two men embraced as Haley broke down, sobbing with the overwhelming emotions he must have felt.

This past year, our only niece graduated from high school in Michigan.  Unfortunately, our budget didn’t allow the two of us to be at her graduation or open house.  However, we were able to afford a plane ticket so she could visit her aunt and uncle in California.  She came to visit us in August, about a month before she started college.

The first weekend she was here, Bill came back from the mailbox and handed me a large, thick, manila envelope.  I took one look at the return address, and I got excited.

The minute I saw this, I knew exactly what it contained. My uncle's military records!

I contained my excitement enough to open the envelope without ripping the contents.  Though I wanted to go through the documents in more detail at some point, my goal the first time through was to skim through to see if I could find any mention of my Aunt Bunny.

So, through the pages I went, as fast as I could go without missing any mention of a name.  Place names were popping up on every page.  Street names were familiar; Knickerbocker Avenue, Genesee Avenue, and Wheeler Drive were all places I knew the family had lived at one time or another.  Then came places that my Uncle was stationed like Korea, Casablanca, Texas, Michigan, and others.

It wasn’t until almost the very last pages in the packet that I found what I was looking for.  On the page, the typing was very faint, so it was hard to read.  “7 Jan 52:  Amn (Airman) married Miss Ethel….”

Ethel?  Was Aunt Bunny’s real name Ethel?  There was one way to find out.  I went in and changed the name on my records at Ancestry.com and I got a new leaf!

One of the things I was pointed to were some family trees, and a few of them had a picture attached to their record of Ethel.  It was a picture that I had never posted on Ancestry.com, but it excited me even more when I saw it.

That's right! It was the same picture of Bunny and her children that my Dad had given me!

I was certain that whoever had this picture was a member of the family somehow.  I just didn’t know who.  It could be one of my cousins, or it could be another relative of my Aunt.  I was hoping that whoever it was would be able to help me find Aunt Bunny and my cousins.

So, to the two people who I saw with the picture, I sent an email.  Basically I said that I had come across the name in my Uncle’s separation paperwork, that I had seen the picture and it matched one my father had given to me, and asked how they might be related and that I was trying to find out if my Aunt and cousins were still living, and if so, would there be a way to get in touch with them by email or phone.  I did not include any names in my email at the time.

The first person I sent the message to didn’t respond for a few days, and while they were helpful, they were not a relative of mine (it was a relative from Bunny’s side of the family though).  The second person I sent the message to was the first to respond.  The reply was brief, but thrilling:

Hi Pam,
Bunny was my mother. Who was your uncle?

I had my own little Alex Haley moment when I read that.  I found you!  Cousin!  I found you!  I immediately wrote back, this time filling in the details so that she knew exactly who I was talking about.  I eventually was given contact information for all my cousins.  I also found out that the two oldest actually were Bunny’s children from a previous marriage, so they are not actually blood relatives, though I still consider them to be my cousins.

Unfortunately, I found out my Aunt Bunny passed away a few years ago.  It was the one sad thing amid this joyous moment.

The greatest thing though was that while my niece was still with us, we were able to talk on the phone with one of my cousins.  He actually had been the one that, several years before had called around to find my Dad, and they both unfortunately lost touch with each other after that brief re-connection.  I was able to put them back in touch with each other, and my cousin visited Michigan last fall to spend time with my Dad.  My brother and his family also got to meet him.  I am hoping that I will get to meet him and my other cousins soon.

So, I had met the challenge my Dad had originally set for me; it took just over a year to do it.  By tracing our roots, I had just discovered a branch on our tree that had been hidden from view.  While that portion of the journey was over, my adventuring in ancestry was just getting started!

Discovery

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adventure, Ancestry.com, Arkansas, Daviess County, discovery, Dunklin County, genealogy, information, journey, Malden, Missouri, Nebraska, obituary, Taylor, US Census, West Virginia

At times, on a journey, you come across something unexpected, a discovery that lends a bit of excitement to your adventure.  When Bill and I were last in Michigan several years ago, we visited Mackinac Island, a place I hadn’t been to since I was a kid.  When I had been there with my family all those years ago, we had ridden bicycles around the perimeter of the island.  Bill and I walked some of the paths farther in, and saw many wonderful wooded landscapes, and , a fort that I had never seen before.

Flags being raised at Fort Mackinac

Fort Mackinac was a well-known fort, and we got there early enough to see these Girl Scouts raise the flags that day.  The fort we discovered though was not nearly as well fortified.

Bill in the doorway into Fort George/Fort Holmes

The fort was not much more than raised dirt walls, but according to the sign nearby it “was the bulwark of British defenses in 1814 when the American attack was repulsed.”  I could see why.  It was at the highest point on the island, and looked straight down on Fort Mackinac.

Looking down from our newly discovered fort, we could see the flags that we had watched the scouts raise a few hours before.

Not all discoveries come in the form of forts or buildings though.  With genealogy, discovery often takes the form of documents; various records and photographs.

One such genealogical discovery I made was in the documents my father had sent me.  One in particular I called “genealogy gold”.  It was the obituary of my paternal great-grandfather, William H. Taylor.

William Henry Taylor Obituary

OLD RESIDENT OF THE CITY BURIED LAST FRIDAY

William H. Taylor, age 75 years, 3 months, and five days, who died March 15th, at his home here, was buried in Park Cemetry last Friday afternoon, following religious services which were conducted at the Methodist Church by the Pastor, the Rev. W. J. Velvick.

Mr. Taylor was born on Nov. 1o, 1857 in Upshur County, West Virginia, the son of John and Eliza Taylor. He moved with his family to Nebraska in 1884 and for nine years resided in that state. In 1893, he moved to Gallatin, Mo., where he made his home for sixteen years, moving from there to Arkansas, where he lived for three years. In 1913, he moved with his family to Malden and opened a furniture store having operated that business up until he was stricken with paralysi two years age. Mr. Taylor suffered his first paralytic stroke while serving on the election in1931, and had been unable to continue his business after that time.

He was married on March 15, 1883 to miss Georgia Chrisman and to this union nine children were born, three of these having preceded their father in death. Mr. Taylor is surviced by his wife and six children, these being: Roy Taylor of Carbondale, Ill.; Mrs. Dell Lukeheart, Ceadar grove, Iowa; Mrs. Ethel Littell, Mounds, Ill.; Mrs. Maud Hester of Malden;Mrs. Hazel Nobel of Parma; and Ralph Taylor of Flint, Michigan.

On the date of his death, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, were celebrating their golden wedding anniversary, having been married for fifty years.

(handwritten) 2 of the songs (Some Day We’ll Know, Abide With Me)

 Wow!  I was blown away!  Basically this one document confirmed every bit of census data that I had already found, and filled in a few details as well.  Within about a year of marrying my great-grandmother, they had moved to Nebraska, where census data showed that five of their children were born:  Millard Dee (1885), Roy Oscar (1887), Boyd (1888), Lucy Dell (1891), and Ethel (1892). In 1893, the family moved to Gallatin, Missouri in Daviess County and lived there for sixteen years, enough time for three other children to be born:  Anna Maud (1894), Hazel (1896), and Floyd Ralph, my grandfather (1900).

My Grandfather and His Family

Now looking at the fact that 9 children were born and only 8 were living, I knew that child number nine could have been born in West Virginia prior to the first move, in Nebraska, in Missouri, or possibly somewhere along the road.  My best guesses were that, barring the possibility of a twin, it would be a child older than Millard, a child born in the gap between Boyd and Lucy Dell, or in the gap between Hazel and my grandfather.

They would live there until about 1909, when they moved to Arkansas, just in time to be there for the 1910 census.

Now there was no question; my family had indeed lived in Arkansas!

With the information from the obituary, I was now able to figure out which of the children were still living and which had died.  Ethel, Maud, Hazel and my grandfather were still living with their parents.  Roy and Dell were listed in the obituary.  Therefore, Millard and Boyd had died.  I was able to confirm this. I found a picture of their grave marker at findagrave.com.  Boyd died in 1905; Millard in 1907.  They were buried in Gallatin, Missouri.

Finally, my great-grandparents didn’t stay in Arkansas long; they moved to Malden in 1913, which is where they lived out their lives.  My great-grandfather ran a furniture store until he had a stroke in 1931 when he was serving on the election, and he died in 1933 on the day of his golden wedding anniversary.  It seems like the Ides of March was both a good and a bad day in his life.

I am not sure why this obituary was typed rather than a newspaper clipping like the one I was given for my great-grandmother.  Perhaps the copy was in a very deteriorated condition, and the person who typed it wanted to retain the information, even if it wasn’t in its original form.  Perhaps they copied it from a clipping that belonged to another member of the family.  This likely was done before the age of the Xerox machine.  It could have also been typed by one member of the family and mailed to another farther away.

The one piece of information that is on this typed copy though is one that you would not find in the newspaper.  That is the handwritten note that indicates two of the songs played or sung at the funeral.  Whoever wrote that down was either at the funeral or had spoken to someone who had been in attendance.

It’s always great to discover a new piece of information.  It’s greater still when a piece of information confirms the data you have.

Point of Origin

Tags

Ancestry.com, Ellis Island, genealogy, Hungary, immigration, journey, manifest, origin, Sabados, ship, Szabados, Transylvania, US Census, Zselyk

Where do my ancestors come from?  It was a question I had asked myself many times, and I’m sure others have too.  I personally don’t know the exact makeup of my own family.  I have been told I have Native American ancestors on both sides, but as to those that came from other countries I am not certain.  The names of my own ancestors suggest that I likely have roots in England and Scotland.  At this point, I can’t pinpoint an exact location for my family, a specific point of origin from whence they came.

We had just found a possible match for Bill’s side of the family for his grandfather and great-grandmother, and in the ship’s manifest, it offered the information for the point of origin for these two travellers.

From the Alien Passenger Manifest of the S. S. Vaderland, sailing from Antwerp, June 27, 1908.

The name of the town these two came from was Zselyk, Hungary.  Now, the strange thing was, this somehow seemed familiar.  It seemed to me I had seen this name somewhere before.

From time to time, I go over records that I have looked at before, hoping to see if there is any other bit of information I can glean from them.  I was looking again at a copy of the 1920 US Census for the family:

1920 US Census data for my husband's great-grandparents and his grandfather. Joseph is the name that is cut off.

In looking at the columns showing nativity and mother tongue, I noticed the census taker had been extremely thorough (thankfully!) in his job, not only entering the country, but the city as well.

The name of the city is listed on the census as Tselyk and the country as Austria-Hungary.

Zselyk/Tselyk, Hungary/Austria-Hungary; I realized they were a match!  I couldn’t wait to find out where this city was, and so I typed Zselyk, Hungary as a search on Google Maps.  I got nothing back.  I tried Tselyk, Hungary.  Still nothing.

I was missing something.  I had forgotten that a lot had changed in the Hungary that Bill’s ancestors had left and the Hungary of today.  Hungary was a much larger country prior to World War I, as older maps will show.  After World War I, the country was divided up among several other countries, so it was possible that the city I was looking for was in another country altogether.

I decided to try another tactic and typed into my Google search engine “Where is the city of Zselyk, Hungary currently located?”  I started scrolling through the beginnings of the 386 hits I received, and one name popped up over and over again:  Jeica, Romania.  Now, searching for Jeica, I was able to find the town.  It lies on the western side of the Carpathian Mountains in the region known as Transylvania.

So, in this case, some of the family lore turned out to be true!  The family’s point of origin was a small village in Transylvania.  As to the part about vampires, Bill doesn’t mind garlic at all; it’s onions he can’t stand.

So, now the only person whose ship we needed to locate was Bill’s great-grandfather, the other Mihály Szabados.  The only trouble was, I was getting a lot of hits for the name, and nothing I was finding was making sense.  The point of origin was off, or the destination wasn’t right.  I thought perhaps I would need to put several possibilities in the Shoe Box for a while.

Then, I started to think about what Mihály’s most immediate destination would have been.  While ultimately, he was bound for Columbus, Ohio, his ship would likely dock somewhere on the East Coast.  The most likely destination?  Ellis Island.

Over 12 million immigrants started their journey into the United States through Ellis Island.  Through the ship manifests for the Mauretania and the Vaderland, I knew that the ships that had brought the rest of the family to the US had docked in New York; would I be fortunate enough to find my final ship had done so also?

So, I went to the Ellis Island web site and did a passenger search.  The information they asked for was simple:  (optional) first name, last name, approximate year of birth, and gender.  The 1910 US Census estimated the birth year as 1875; I asked it to search within two years before and after that date.  I received a total of five hits.  Most I dismissed right away because the year of arrival was way off.  In the response information though, they gave the point of origin, and for one, the place listed was “Zsalik”, which seemed a likely misspelling for Zselyk.

Alien Passenger Manifest for the S. S. Cedric, sailing from Liverpool on March 14, 1906, arriving in New York March 24, 1906.

When I saw the destination was Columbus, Ohio, I knew that I had found the right person.  In glancing just below Bill’s great-grandfather though, I noticed the name of another Szabados (Yanos, or Janos) that was crossed out.  I wondered why this had happened.  Had this other person died on the trip over?  Had he been turned away and returned to his own country?  Who was this person, and was there a connection between him and Bill’s great-grandfather?  For now, those questions remain unanswered.

On Ancestry.com, I found out why I had been having such difficulty locating the record.  The name had been transcribed incorrectly.  Instead of Szabados, they had transcribed it as Szahados.  I was able to take advantage of a feature of Ancestry.com that allows you to suggest a correction for information on a record.  By submitting a correction suggestion, it makes it easier for someone else to find a record.

I was able to find the records for Bill’s great-grandmother and his grandfather through Ellis Island also, but not for his grandmother, Mary.  I found this a bit strange at first.  Since I knew which ship Mary travelled on, I did a search by ship as well.  The Mauretania had records of going through Ellis Island in 1921, but nothing in July when Mary came to the US.  In 1921, there were changes in the laws (specifically in the quota laws that were adopted), but why that might have meant that Mary’s boat did not go through Ellis Island, I am not sure.

 

Arrivals/Departures

Tags

Ancestry.com, arrival, departure, genealogy, Hungary, immigration, information, Mauretania, ship, shoebox

Every time I have been at an airport, I watch the board that lists the arrival and departure times of the various flights.  When I am the traveller, it allows me to estimate the time I have before my flight leaves; if I have time to get that last cup or coffee, or make a last-minute pit stop before boarding.  When I am waiting for someone at the airport, it allows me to gauge the wait, and usually gets me more excited with the anticipation of their arrival.

In reviewing the census data, I now had the estimated time of arrival (ETA) of four of my husband’s relatives:

• Michael Sabados Sr. – 1906
• Anna Sabados and Michael Sabados Jr. – 1908
• Mary Sabados (née Bakai) – 1921

We had gotten Bill’s grandmother’s maiden name from one of his aunts.  We would not be able to find her arrival without it, as she had not been married to his Grandpa Mike when she came to this country.

I was very excited about this part of the investigation.  I’ve always had a certain amount of fascination about ships.  I’ve never been on a cruise before, but I have always wanted to travel on an ocean liner.  Growing up near the Great Lakes, I’ve seen my share of freighters and tankers.  Even smaller boats have held my fascination.  I can remember being young and going to Boblo Island with my school.  I don’t really remember much about the park or the rides, but I loved that cruise down the Detroit River.

Even ship wrecks capture my imagination.  I kept tabs on the recent events with the Costa Concordia for several days.  Growing up in Michigan, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was more than just a Gordon Lightfoot song.  And the first movie Bill and I went out to see on a date?  Titanic.

So, I was very excited to find out about the ships that brought them to the United States.  We found Mary’s ship first, and I was really excited, because I knew the name of the ship when I saw it.

Name of the ship from the alien passenger manifest - S. S. Mauretania

Picture of the Mauretania

The Mauretania was a ship on the Cunard Line.  In its heyday, it was one of the fastest ships crossing the Atlantic, and only its sister ship ever beat her record prior to 1929.  The Mauretania was the younger sibling of a ship made even more famous by historical event; the Lusitania.  In 1915, during World War I, the Lusitania was sunk by a German torpedo.  Of the 1,959 passengers and crew aboard, 1,153 drowned, among them 128 US citizens.  While the US did not enter the war until two years after this event, the sinking of the Lusitania did change public opinion regarding the war, and likely made it easier for the US to later become involved.

The Mauretania spent a portion of the war docked, as passenger service declined during the war.  Later, the “Maury” would see service as a troop transport ship and a hospital ship.  In 1919, she was put back into her duties as a passenger ship, and two years later, Bill’s grandmother would board her to come to America.

One piece of information I noted was that in July of 1921 (the same month and year Bill’s grandmother arrived), A fire broke out on the Mauretania in Southampton, and she was out of service from that time until March of 1922.  The date of the fire was July 15th, ten days after Mary arrived in the US!  Who knows how history for our family would have changed if the fire had happened a few weeks before!

There was more difficulty in trying to locate Anna and Michael on their arrival in the US.  I was looking under Sabados and under Szabados (the Hungarian spelling), and was finding some hits for Anna, but nothing for her son.  Then, I realized that I’m looking for a Hungarian using his anglicized name!  So, I went to a search engine and quickly typed in “What is the Hungarian equivalent of Michael?” and got the response:  Mihály.

Now looking for Anna and Mihály Szabados, I found a possible match!  I still wasn’t sure it was them, and I did store the passenger list in my Shoe Box for a time.  I would soon find I already had a piece of information in my possession that would confirm this match, and lead me not just to the port of call they had departed, but back to where their journey had begun.

Intersections and Mergers

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Ancestry.com, Hungary, immigration, information, intersection, investigation, journey, merge, merger, path

In our journeys through life, two paths can come together.  They will sometimes intersect, crossing one another for a brief time.  When a marriage occurs, that intersection becomes a merger, as the history of one life melds into another.

My husband Bill and I had our paths intersect at first in the late 90’s, and before the end of the millennium, our paths had merged.  Over our years together, he has shared with me some of his family stories, and, with parts of my own family history becoming blocked off for the time being, I took the opportunity to now turn my attention to Bill’s family history.

On my side of the family, I still didn’t know when my ancestors had arrived in the United States or even from where they came.  On Bill’s father’s side of the family though, while he didn’t know the when, he most certainly knew the where.  His grandparents had immigrated from Hungary and eventually settled near Columbus, Ohio.  Family lore stated that they came more specifically from Transylvania.  He would joke about being from the area where Vlad the Impaler  (also known by his patronymic Dracula) ruled.  Mainly, he would reference Dracula, the character in Bram Stoker’s novel.  My “Hungarian Bloodsucker” as I would teasingly call my husband, also had another potential tie-in with vampires on his mother’s side of the family.  His maternal grandfather’s name was Schreck (a shortened form of Schreckengost, and Bill often wondered if Max Schreck, the actor who had played Count Orlock in F. W. Murnau’s silent classic Nosferatu, could possibly be related.

Bill's Dad (also Bill) with his mother Mary and father Mike. Funny...none of them look like vampires to me.

So, for now, putting thoughts of ancestors that could possibly turn into bats or go off in search of a blood feast, I started looking for records that could lead me back to the time when Bill’s grandparents came to the US.  It didn’t take me long to find them in the 1930 US Census (names of the children have been blurred for privacy).

Grandpa Mike (as Bill calls him) is doing pretty good for himself.  He owns a home, valued at $2,100.00 and he has four children already.  He is a laborer and works at a boltworks.

When I looked at the rest of the fields for this census data, I found that all of the children were born in the US, and that Grandpa Mike and Grandma Mary had not become US citizens yet.  Both could speak English though.  We do know that Hungarian was spoken in the home; Bill said that he can remember his grandmother speaking Hungarian most of the time to his grandfather, especially when she got angry at something.

Bill’s Dad, who was the youngest, was pushed by his brothers and sisters to learn English before going to school; they didn’t want him to struggle the way some of them did.

One last thing I noted on this census was the years that each had come to the US. Mike arrived in 1908; Mary didn’t arrive until 1921.  This meant that I would not be able to find her in any other US census previous to this one.  My search would then need to focus on Mike and his family.

Joseph is the name of the youngest son.

As you can see, Grandpa Mike’s father’s name is also Michael.  That made for some interesting conversations when I was trying to explain some of the records to my husband.  Grandpa Mike is working at the boltworks on this census too, while his father, Michael Sr., works for a scrap iron and metal company.  Bill’s great-grandfather has done well enough since coming to the US to own his home free and clear.

I was really surprised by the gap in Grandpa Mike and his brother’s ages.  I wondered if they had tried to have other children in the 14-15 year span between the births of these two boys.

I did note that Bill’s great-grandparents had come to the US about two years apart.  Apparently, Mike Sr. came over about 1906, and two years later, wife Anna came over with Mike Jr.  So now I was going to be looking for three boats and not two.  I would be looking for the boat that brought Michael over to prepare the way for this wife and son, the boat that brought Anna and Michael over to reunite the family, and finally, the boat that would bring Bill’s grandmother to the US where her path would intersect and later merge, with that of his grandfather.

 

Twists and Turns

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adventure, Ancestry.com, draft, findagrave.com, genealogy, information, journey, Lawson, path, road, shoebox, Whittaker

I was fortunate to know most of my grandparents.  On my father’s side, I did not get to know his mother; she died when I was just a baby.  His father remarried, and it was his second wife that I knew as my Grandma.  Once he died though, she moved away to be closer to her children from a previous marriage, and our family didn’t keep in touch with them.  On my mother’s side, I was very fortunate to have both grandparents alive to see many milestones in my life.  They were able to see me graduate from high school and later from college.  While they didn’t get to see me marry the first time (since I eloped), they did get to be there to see me get married to my present husband.  My grandfather died later that year.  My grandmother, now in her 90’s, is still with us.

I only ever met one of my great-grandparents.  My grandmother’s mother, Thenie F.  Whittaker Lawson, had come to Michigan to stay with the family for a time.  I was about eight or nine, and somehow, she intimidated, even scared me a little!  She seemed much sterner than the smiling image of her daughter above, and I don’t remember her talking much.  When she did talk, I don’t remember understanding her much.  She mumbled and muttered much of the time.  She was in her 80’s at the time, and was probably the oldest person I had ever seen at that time.

I remember the day that she died.  My Mom and Grandma had gone with her to the store (Yankees, I believe, but it might have been about the time they were taken over by Zodys).  I didn’t go into the store with them; I stayed out in the car (that was back in the days when people left their kids out in the car without fear of them being abducted or overheating).  What I remembered was the ambulance coming, sirens going off and lights flashing.  I don’t remember much after that other than going home.  I didn’t know what had happened to my great-grandmother until later.  She had a heart attack while in the store.

In trying to go back into Thenie’s history, I thought it would be easy.  After all, Thenie is a rather unusual name.  However, I didn’t realize how many twists and turns I would take with the name Whittaker!  It didn’t take me long to realize that this again, might be a journey that would not be the straightforward path I had thought it to be.

For example, here are some of the variations of Whittaker that I found on my initial searches:

• Whittaker
• Whitaker
• Whiteaker
• Whitacre

And, as to Thenie being helpful because of it being unusual?  I failed to take into account how census takers can mangle a name.  And, in this case, I feel they did more than just that.

I had to make some educated guesses with these records, and I believe they all are showing the same family group.  However, there is still a possibility that I could be wrong.  Judge for yourself.

This is the one census that I know is correct for my family. Notice though that my great-grandmother is listed as Thenia instead of Thenie.

If you think that’s bad, let’s go back to 1910.

Now, Whittaker has become Whiteaker, and Thenie is now Othena? What gives?

Now, here’s also where family lore and census data start to butt heads.  My great-grandmother did have a twin whose name was Mary.  However, family lore stated she died as an infant.  Yet, here she is, almost an adult!  The lone son listed here is named Vetery.  My great-grandmother had a brother named Vetter.

When I saw my great-grandmother listed here as Othena, somewhere in the back of my mind I could hear someone, in a voice very much like my grandmother’s saying to the census taker, “Now let’s see, we have a Sarah, a Mary, and a Thenie….”

When you get to 1900 though, things really start to get wonky:

OK, what is wrong with this picture?

OK, now the family has their last name listed as Whitacre.  Thenie has now changed into Venie.  The twin Mary is still there, and the birthdate is shown as May 1891 (which is the month and year of my great-grandmother’s birth).  However, there is a big difference in ages between the Rebecah here and the Rebecca of 10 years later.  I do notice though that the 1900’s Rebecah has 9 children of which 5 are living.  The 1910 Rebecca has 10 children of which 5 still live.

The big problem I had here was the mystery of the youngest child.  ‘Vetery’ who was listed as being about four years younger than the twins (and was listed as a son), had disappeared!  In his place was a daughter named “Legie”, born in June of 1896 (which is, coincidentally, when my relative Vetter was born).

Talk about a roller coaster ride!  I felt like I was zigging and zagging all over the place with these records.  Just when I thought I would find something that would tie everything up neatly, a wild curve sent me whirling into a spin!

Ancestry.com has the option of saving items you aren’t sure tie into your family tree to a ‘Shoebox’ so that you can review them at a later time.  I thought for sure that the 1900 and 1910 US Census records I had found would be in my Shoebox for a long time.  Then, one day, I decided to do a search on Vetter Whittaker trying to see if I could find out more about him, and I stumbled across this record that I think ties it all together:

Lige (or Leige) Vetter Whittaker – now it was all starting to make sense!

So, Vetter’s first name was Leige.  To me, this tied Vetter into the Legie that was listed in 1900.  Their birth dates were the same month and year.  They had somehow entered the gender wrong!  Could it have been that the census taker wasn’t paying attention and copied information from the previous line.  Had he made an assumption, thinking that Legie sounded like a girl’s name?  I know that I’ve seen pictures of very young children, both boys and girls being dressed very much alike.  If this boy got any hand-me-downs, they likely came from his sisters.  Could the census taker have put down ‘daughter’ without asking anyone what the gender of the child actually was?

It was about this same time that in my journeys out in cyberspace that I came across the website www.findagrave.com.  Find A Grave has contributors around the world that update, maintain, and add to the list of over 75 million grave sites.  Searching the records is very easy, and you can sometimes find a great deal of information.  Vetter was one of the first people who I searched for.  Not only did I find him listed, but someone had actually taken pictures of his grave marker!  Even more exciting was the fact that a piece on the head stone contained a picture of Vetter and his wife!

Vetter and his wife Arizonia. This is a close up of the picture medallion on their grave marker.

Eventually, I ran out of steam on this line as well, and so, I turned away from looking into my side of the family tree entirely and began to journey into my husband’s ancestral past.

From Paternal to Maternal – A New Path

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adventure, Ancestry.com, genealogy, journey, Kentucky, mystery, path, road block, Tennessee

For a time, my father’s family history had become blocked; I was finding no avenue down which I could make any progress.  Two paths had merged when my parents married me and had children though.  I decided to turn aside for a time from the path of my father’s historical lineage and begin to trace the path that was my mother’s family line.

My mother, sad to say, would not be able to share in this journey as my father has been able to do with the information I have gathered about his family.  She passed away a few years ago.  However, because the family had gathered together some of the history, I had more of a head start on this portion of my journey.

One of the things that intrigued me about Mom’s side of the family was the fact that, up until I had received a copy of this family history, I had always thought she was the first-born child.  But, she wasn’t!  She had, in fact been the second born; she had an older sister.

Family lore has a rather sad story about what happened to this little girl.  She had been climbing up to get an item (nail polish, as I was told) that was on the mantle of the fireplace.  In climbing, she had slipped somehow, fell into the fireplace, and was burned.  She died.

I wondered about this little girl.  It surprised me to find that while the family knew her name, they did not have anything to give me about her birth and death information.  I wasn’t sure why this was.  Perhaps part of it was due to the fact that my grandparents lost several personal items when they had a fire at their home in Tennessee.  Up in flames had gone all their memories; photographs and home movies gone with no hope of recovery (the technologies that allow for some items like this to be recovered digitally did not exist when this occurred).  The family had done what they could to restore some of these memories.  Taking from their own family photographs, they were able to compile some family pictures for them, but none of them had a picture of the oldest child of my grandparents.

It didn’t take too long to find a birth record for her, however.  Through Ancestry.com, I was able to find my mother’s birth record, and looking just a few years farther back, I was able to find her older sister’s.  The death record was more elusive.  I wasn’t able to locate any record of her death.  At this point I wasn’t sure about when she died or even where she died.  Because the story indicated she had climbed up to reach something, I figured she would be older than a toddler.  My mother’s next oldest sister, three years younger than my Mom, had no recollection of her sister, therefore, my working theory was that she had died no later than when my Aunt had been two or three.  As to the where, would she have died in Kentucky, where she was born?  Could the family have moved by then?  Eventually, my grandparents had moved from Kentucky to Michigan.  Could my mother’s older sister have died in one of those places, or somewhere in between?

My journey down this path also had another mystery I encountered along the way. One of my great-grandfathers also did not have any recorded history of his death that I could find.  My maternal grandfather’s father supposedly had died a few years after my grandfather was born.  As to when that happened or where, the family had no clue.  I had another challenge to overcome, and another potential road block loomed before me.

I’ve found on this journey of mine that the path is rarely smooth, and there are all sorts of bumps and twists and turns along the way.  As I was to find when I started into my maternal grandmother’s side of the family, those twists and turns were going to make the going a little more treacherous.  I was going to need to watch my step, or I might make a mistake that could set me off down the wrong path.

The Long and Winding Road

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adventure, Ancestry.com, Arkansas, Dunklin County, Flint, genealogy, investigation, journey, Malden, Michigan, Missouri, path, road, Sevier County, Taylor, US Census, Virginia, West Virginia

When I decided to trace my great-grandfather’s journey from West Virginia to Malden, Missouri, I never realized what a long and winding road his path would take!  Malden was his family’s final destination, but by no means was it their only one.

I had already found a 1930 US Census that showed my grandparents had already moved to my home town of Flint, Michigan.  As my grandfather was their youngest child, it was likely all the children were married or out of the house.  Once I found the 1930 census, it confirmed my suspicions:

Portion of the 1930 US Census showing my great-grandparents.

My great-grandparents were living by themselves.  I knew where my grandfather was at this time.  Where were all of his siblings?

I did learn a few things from this survey.  My great-grandparents owned a home, valued at $1,500 (not bad considering that this was after the start of the Great Depression).  While you cannot see it from this except, my great-grandfather was not working, nor had he ever been a veteran.  There was a discrepancy between the 1900 US Census and this one:  back in 1900, my great-grandmother had been listed as being born in West Virginia like her husband, William Henry.  However, on this census, she was listed as being born in Virginia!  Which one was correct?

I decided to keep working backwards, and found them again in 1920 in Malden, Missouri, this time with one child still at home.

1920 and one child left in the house: my grandfather!

Georgia didn’t seem to know which side of the state line she was born on.  This time, not only is she born in West Virginia, but so are her parents!  In 1930, they, like her, had crossed over the border to be born in Virginia.

As I continued research on this and other parts of my family tree, I  would learn over and over again that records can contain inaccurate and sometimes misleading information.  I also began to distinguish between primary source data, and secondary source data.

The US Census contains a mixture of both.  It is a primary source for where a person resided on the date that the census occurred.  Much of the other data though is a secondary data source.  Ages and birth year and month, places of birth, and places of parent’s birth are second-hand information on these records.  Other records (like a birth certificate) would be a primary data source that could confirm the information on the census.

For now though, I would continue one more decade back and fill in the last gap.  With the information on the 1910 US Census, I would be able to see the movements of my ancestors over a 40-year span.

So:

• 1930 – Malden, Missouri
• 1920 – Malden, Missouri
• 1910 – ?
• 1900 – Daviess County, Missouri

My working theories were:

1. The family would still be in Daviess County.
2. The family would be somewhere in Missouri between Daviess County and Dunklin County, where Malden is.
3. Since some of the children had been born in Nebraska prior to 1900, the family might have moved back there for a time between the two locations in Missouri.
4. The family would have already moved to Malden.

It’s nice to have theories, but of course it is the facts that will show where their path had really taken them.  And, once again, the path led to a place I didn’t expect.

In 1910, my family lived in...Arkansas?

Here’s a copy of the 1900 Census too:

My Grandfather and His Family

It didn’t faze me in the least that in 1900 my grandfather was listed as Floyd R. and in 1910 was listed as Ralfa.  Ralph was his middle name, and Ralfa I am sure, was a misspelling on the part of some well-meaning census worker.  The M in Anna M. stood for Maud, so again, they had been easy to match up.  Of course, Hazel and Ethel were pretty obvious matches.

What of the other children?  Well, I knew from 1900 that my great-grandmother had nine children and eight were living.  I noticed in 1910, the number of living children had dropped to six.  Two of my grandfather’s siblings had died.  We knew for sure the four children listed on the 1910 Census were alive.  The four not on this census were Millard D., Oscar R., Boyd, and Lucy D..  Which two had lived, and which two had died?

I wondered what had brought my great-grandparents to Arkansas.  You could almost draw a line straight down from Daviess County to Sevier County.  What had sparked their southern migration?  And why, within 10 years, had they returned to Missouri, this time settling in the southeast corner of the state?

It was certainly a long and winding road I had discovered on my great-grandparents’ journey to the West.  From the information I had gathered so far, they had left West Virginia some time prior to 1885 (the approximate year their oldest known child was born in Nebraska).  They stayed in Nebraska long enough to have at least five children.  From there, the family traveled to Daviess County, Missouri, which is likely where my grandfather was born (and possibly at least two other siblings as well).  The unknown 9th child could have been born in any of these locations.  All we know for now is that as of 1900, the child no longer was alive.

By 1910, the family had lost two more of its children, and gained one new family member, a mother-in-law (which means this would be my great-great-grandmother).  The name is listed as what appears to be Luveza Olaker (Ancestry.com listed the name as Luvcza Olaker, but I think my interpretation of the handwriting is closer to the truth).  Two of the children had also moved on to their own paths in life.  The family had also moved south and slightly west to Sevier County, Arkansas, a county just to the east of the Oklahoma border, and not too far away from the northeast border of Texas.

Ten short years later, the family returned to Missouri, this time residing in Dunklin County in the town of Malden.  The 1920 Census only shows my grandfather residing in the home with his parents.  There is not information given on this Census to indicate whether there are fewer living children now; we only know that by 1920, my grandfather’s remaining siblings had left their parents’ home.  In 1920, I also learned that my great-grandfather was running a furniture store, and my grandfather was listed as being in sales (was he working for his father?).

By 1930, my grandfather had already moved out on his own and was working on raising a family of his own in Flint, Michigan.  His parents, still residing in Malden, were no longer working.  They lived in a house they owned.

I had exhausted this path for the moment, and so I turned to yet another detour.  However, a surprising piece of information would soon come my way that would confirm much of the research I had just done.