Sidetracked

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adventure, journey, Lawson, Newell, path, road, side track, US Census, Whittaker

Sometimes, on a journey, you veer off the path you had chosen to take.  Perhaps you saw a sign offering you a chance to see some great local sight.  Maybe you just happened to look over and see something to the side of the road, and you wanted to check it out.

In one instance, my husband and I, while on our honeymoon trip, were enticed by a tape.

Though the Polaroid I took was slightly damaged, it still shows the “Sky Blue Journal” set of tapes that offered us insight into history and sites as we traveled through Minnesota. In the background, you can see one of those sites. You can also see our travelling companion, Blue. That’s another story. 😉

The tape happened to mention there was a statue of the Jolly Green Giant just a few miles away from where we were travelling.  Of course, I wanted to see it.  So, we went, and sure enough, there he was!  You almost expected to hear the “Ho, ho, ho!” from the massive, 55 foot tall guy.  We didn’t stay long, but we got pictures and enjoyed a quick break from our cross-country trip.

Lately, with my research, I’ve felt pretty much the same way.  I try to focus in on one person, but I might catch a glimpse of something that leads me off my path.

For instance, I started researching my great-grandmother, Bessie Mae Layne Newell Massey.  I was hoping to find some additional records about Herbert Newell, her first husband and my great-grandfather.  Instead, I wound up getting more information about George Massey, her second husband.  While interesting, it was not what I was looking for.

I did find one item today on one of these side trips that gave me some additional information on my grandmother’s family.  I was looking for information on another great-grandfather, Manford Lawson, and came upon a death certificate for one of his sons:

You can see that James died of whooping-cough. This is just about the time that the whooping-cough vaccine was developed. Too bad it didn’t save him.

James was another of the family’s “One Hit Wonders”.  He made his one and only appearance in 1920 on the US Census.

James in the 1920 Census.

Sometimes, being sidetracked can be fun, but at other times, it can be frustrating.  I’ve had a particular post in mind, and it just seems like every time I start the research for it, I find myself on tangents.  Even fruitful moments like finding the death record for James don’t make up for the fact that, right now, I should be finding other records for other family members.

Have you ever been sidetracked like this?  If so, how do you break away from the side trips and get back to your genealogical path?

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?

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.