I was unable to find any of my grandparents before the 1920 census but I hit the jackpot and found all four of them in South Dakota in 1920. I could not find my maternal grandmother’s family using the search feature, but I did find them by browsing through records for the town of Wagner. Luckily it is a small town. The family is listed below on lines 40-44. I was curious why “Place of Birth” for my family was listed as “mixed blood” and “Sioux” rather than a place name (state, country, or maybe Dakota Territory?) like the other entries on the page. I love it that my great-grandmother was listed as the head of household rather than her son-in-law (my grandfather) and that her occupation was librarian. I was not surprised to see my mother’s name spelled “Jurene” rather than the correct spelling of “Guriene.” Most people still misspell it. Genealogy becomes very challenging with difficulty in reading the handwriting, misspellings, the poor reproduction of the records, and missing records like the 1890 census.
Thank you for responding to this week's lesson. You raise several really interesting points in your comments. 1-Genealogy research often does involve more browsing and cross-referencing and following potential leads to dead ends than really nailing a search the first time and 2- What can we deduct from this snippet of history about race relations, native, non-native relations, etc. Why the mixed blood rather than a physical location/place? Do the Sioux have a matriarchal family structure, ie was the great-grandmother the head of household because she was the eldest or because she was the eldest woman?
ReplyDeleteReading the handwriting is a huge challenge, just imagine the armies of archivist interns that are typing out these handwritten census records as we speak so that 10 years from now the 1940 census might be legible.
I doubt they're archival interns doing this indexing! We tend to make them shuffle paper and they don't get much chance to read it. :)
ReplyDeleteI've always wondered about misspelled names though. I sometimes wonder if our ancestors were quite as focused on exact spelling as we are. For example, I've seen the same guy spell his own name three or more different ways, and when his name is William Camps, you really have to start wondering. (That was an example from Utah territorial court records where I saw a lot of that kind of thing). I could see it if others frequently misspelled it, but when people spell their own name a variety of ways?
Then again, my paternal grandfather spelled my first name Arline from the time I was born to the time he died. I'm certain my mother corrected him on a number of occasions, but to no avail. He was convinced my name was Arline.