Census Headscratchers

Sometimes you do hit head-scratchers. I have an 1850 Census in Weston, Platte Co., Missouri, and another in Weston Township. 

In the town of Weston on 10 Aug 1850 Jonus S. Woods was a 24-year-old brickmason, born Ohio, married to Emily, with children Resella age 3, and Alfred appearing to be 27 (possibly months?), and with $3000 in real estate. Neighbors include Jonus' father Jeremiah and brother John S. with Elizabeth. 

In Weston Township on 2 Sep 1850 Jonas F Woods age 25, born Ohio, no occupation listed, married to Emily, with $2000 in real estate, and children Rosella age 3 and Alfred age 1. Neighbors include John and Elizabeth Woods (shown Williams) Matlock, Howard, Humphrey, Simpson. 

The family is the same, What appears to me to the be the case is that Jonas/Jonus occupied 2 properties near or adjacent to his brother John and his wife Elizabeth, and both families were counted in both places. One property worth $3000 was in town, and the other worth $2000 was rural. 

Since the census indexes pick up both of them, you can't just grab and go, and think you know what is going on. Had I stopped with the rural census I would have missed the proximity to other family members shown in the town listing where several generations lived. Without the rural census, I would have missed the rural investment of the family, and the questions it prompts. How large was the property and how was it used? Others on the page are farmers, but some are tradesmen. 

This data reveals some useful things about the family and are suggestive for further research, but the larger project holds the frame. It's too easy to get lost in the data for its own sake.

Scenemaker

31 Oct 2014

The New England Migration

My computers now are up and working with a collection of new parts, and I'm getting back to work. I've been spending some downtime exploring the larger picture, reading in history, and it takes a while to shift gears back to more tedious file work.

I highly recommend to anybody researching New England, New York, New Jersey and Ohio: The Expansion of New England: The Spread of New England Settlement and Institutions to the Mississippi River, 1620-1865. By Lois Kimball Mathews, copyright 1909, and (re)published by NEHGS in 2012. Very informative about the migration generally, but particularly helpful if you have any research targets in the northeast before about 1840.

The author accounts for families and groups leaving one town to begin another, and the seeding and transfer of settlers and their culture to new towns and regions. She documents the spread of families, institutions and cultural influences from Massachusetts to Connecticut and the rest of New England, to New York and New Jersey, and then on to Ohio where they contrasted and mingled with southern influences

The book is generally informative but it may be particularly appreciated if you are familiar with the geography and you have a sense of the cultural practice the author discusses. I grew up in Kansas and lived in other Midwestern states, but I'm a 30-year resident of Massachusetts. Things work differently here - one might say, almost in every way. Think of it as preceding the "Age of Reason" in the sense of 18th Century rational emphasis on order and organization. The way things were done changed immensely in America between 1750 and 1800.

That is not what the book is about, however. It gives insight into the ferment of the 18th and 19th Century Expansion as it evolved in the northeast quarter of the country. It is about people moving into new lands and seeding their organization and cultural life in a new place, and often moving on. The book catalogs the founding of settlements and towns, colleges, and other institutions, and the values of the first settlers. It reveals the cultural trails and tracks that spread New England values, Congregational and Presbyterian perspectives and institutions to the whole northeastern quadrant of America.

It's a good read.

Scenemaker
28 October 2014

Research Downtime Isn't

One of the things that can frustrate researchers is unanticipated equipment outages. As one who has built his own computers since the 19-hum-hums, I can verify that when things go south, they can keep on going beyond expectations. "While I've got the box open and everything disconnected..." and one winds up trying to resolve all those accumulating annoyances since the last rebuild. The wait for parts to arrive forces an hiatus on the main research line.

Workstation wreckage

 

And so I move to the mini-laptop, without the major research files. The resource files and working environment are so heavily contextualized on the disabled machine that it's not worth sharing them to another computer. Instead, I step back and reconnect with genealogy writers and other resources. And I actually open books.
My dilemma (I resist the "brick wall" cliche) is a direct-line ancestor who was born, but has no parents. A cousin who introduced me to the research years ago also has been hammering at this character for some time.

Jeremiah Woods, we know from later records, was born in 1805 in Clermont County Ohio. No parents known. It probably was in what became Dayton, in what became Montgomery County. He was married there and we have the record, and we know nothing about his wife. He was buried further south in what is Clermont County today. Since 1805 was very early in the initial settlement of the area, how do we track back further? The surname is hardly unique, but no other Woods in the area seem to meet all the necessary criteria.

The computer down-time prompted me to pick up on historical context in hopes of finding another way in. I've found some fascinating (to me) late 19th and early 20th Century history books for reading on line covering the early settlement of the Ohio and Miami River areas. I've been reading about the exploration, the battles and interactions with the natives, and the settlement of the once wild regions. I've been reading about who settled where, and where the early settlers came from. I've read about the large land purchases where settlements were planned and developed, and the founding of Cincinnati and Dayton. The old turn-of-20th-Century texts are full of detailed stories of people and events through wars and battles with natives, land speculators, congressional privilege, and all the pressures of expansion. It's been a fascinating odyssey.

That said, this is all context. My computer parts arrive tomorrow and I'll get the mess cleaned up. I still haven't found my ancestor, and I need to develop some more imaginative research plan. Time to shift focus and move on again.
Scenemaker 14 October 2014

Challenges and Choices

Beginnings 

With this first post I recommit to bringing order to my thinking and writing. I have previously written on matters of theater, design, and higher education, but for a couple decades I have been engaged also in researching and documenting the history of my and my wife's family history.  It has been intermittent and the intensity varied over the years, as the demands of the present have pressed.

I have enjoyed reading "blogs" by other genealogists over the last decade. I refuse to call myself a genealogist or characterize what I do as genealogy, though it may be. My own research projects have their own shape, but we rise from the same pond.

The appeal of family history research for me is the personal connection to the past. In grade school we learn about our history as a nation, but it all takes on so much greater significance when we can name our ancestor living through those events. We become vicarious visitors to the past, straining to see through their eyes, understanding their circumstances and their choices. We wonder what part of their spirit we carry.

In my case I have several Colonial lines from my mother, and a 20th Century immigrant family on my father's side. Cousins and past family historians have tracked down much of the outline, though some detail remains to be filled in. My particular interests lie in observing how those ancestors interacted with their times and what the texture of their lives was like. I like to know them by their choices.

All of my ancestors moved away from their home communities, or state, or even country, almost every single generation. Clearly they were seekers, and in that sense, quintessentially American, participating in the Great Expansion. I have followed their lead.

1810 Midwest