Some thoughts on the 1940 Census launch

Fortunately I didn't spend much time dealing with the 1940 census on launch day. The site was bogged down and I'm sure many people found it difficult to find anything. I was able to find the first few on my list mainly because they were all in the same enumeration district in rural Calhoun County, Iowa. I knew I was looking for Lake Creek Township and the census map told me that it was enumeration district 13-19. Since the site was severely bogged down, I simply downloaded all 16 pages of the district to my computer and looked through them manually. At this point the site has been so slow that you may as well look for the map and go straight to download rather than "quickview". I've yet to see a map or sheet in the flash viewer the way they had intended them to be viewed.

I've uploaded one in case you haven't seen a census sheet from 1940 yet:

Lake Creek Township, Calhoun County, Iowa, Page 5B (E.D. 13-19)

The image above contains the Harold Whitted residence and lists his wife Helen (Ross) Whitted as his wife. Also living at this residence, according to the census, was his mother-in-law Mary (Stotler) Ross and her son Oliver Ross. The document also contains two spots for supplementary information and as a matter of luck, Harold Whitted is in block 68, so there is some supplementary information about him. Mary (Stotler) Ross is my 2nd Great Grandmother. Not really expecting to see any ground breaking information, but Oliver apparently was visiting from Sioux City. (at the time of the census at least) If you click the image above you should be able to take a closer look at it.

Of the 16 sheets in the Lake Creek township, I found 3 more sheets that had relatives including the Clara and Frank Fowlie family, the Mason and Daisy Ross family and the John Ross Jr. family. I'm expecting to find Floyd Brassfield in Lake City, but I don't have the patience to wait for the website.

Today is 1940 Census Day

Posting has been pretty slow lately. I guess I have been letting other hobbies take priority over genealogy. At 9 AM Eastern on April 2, the 1940 Census will be released. I'm not sure what to expect from this data, but it should help to narrow down where some of my ancestors were living in 1940. It should also help narrow down death dates for a few of the people in my database that I don't have death dates for. 

There won't be a searchable list of names at first, so I'll probably start by flipping through the sheets for Calhoun County, Iowa and Marquette County, Wisconsin.

http://1940census.archives.gov/

Census Saturday - John F Ross (Sr.)

John Ross c.1862

John F. Ross (Sr.) (1859-1934) was my 2nd Great Grandfather and this is a summary of what I found about him from the US Census and from my notes.

John Franklin Ross was born August 2, 1859 in Mansfield, Piatt County, Illinois to Henry and Elizabeth (Cowan) Ross. They were both from Pennsylvania.

On July 7, 1860 the 1860 census was taken and John was living in Sangamon Township, Piatt County, Illinois with his family. According to the census taker, Henry Ross, age 30 of Pennsylvania was the head of household. His mother, Elizabeth Ross, age 30 was listed second. John was recorded as age 1. He had two older siblings, William H. Ross, age 4 and Laura E. Ross, age 3. Also living at the same residence was Catharine Cowan, age 60, mother of Elizabeth and grandmother of John. A 21 year old farm laborer named Stephen Largo was also living with them.

The 1860s were a difficult time for the Ross family. John's sister, Rebecca Jane Ross was born in March 1861 and died just under a year later in March 1862. His father Henry died at the end of June 1863. John's oldest brother William dies in June 1869, possibly by drowning, according to my notes. Henry, William and Rebecca were all buried at Mackey Cemetery, Sangamon Township, Piatt County, Illinois. A photo of their tombstones was featured in this blog a few months ago. I lived very close to this area when I lived in Mahomet, Illinois.

Census Saturday - Gipson Bates

I conducted a search of census records via HeritageQuest online. I was looking for details on Gipson Bates, father of Nellie Belle Bates. She was Elvis John Brassfield's Grandmother. Basically all I'm starting with is Census Records and a gravestone in Sergeant Bluff, Iowa, saying Gipson Bates and dated January 7, 1834 - June 15, 1910. The Census records seem to differ on spelling and date of birth, but that is fairly typical for the census.

The executive summary of this information is:

• Gipson Bates was born in Vermont in 1834, his father appears to have been Moses Bates. Moses Bates was apparently a rather infamous person and mentioned as a "Prairie bandit" in the "History of Black Hawk County, Iowa" book in 1878. Gipson moved from Vermont to Iowa between 1835 and 1837. 
• In 1850, he was living in Black Hawk County, Iowa.
• In 1860, he was living with his brothers in Sergeant Bluff Township, Woodbury County, Iowa.
• In 1870, he was married to Elizabeth and had three children living in Sioux City Township, Woodbury County, Iowa. Their first child was born around 1864.
• In 1880, he was still married to Elizabeth and had eight children living in Liberty Township, Woodbury County, Iowa.
• In 1893,his wife Elizabeth died buried at Sergeant Bluff Cemetery, Sergeant Bluff, Woodbury County, Iowa.
• In 1894, Gipson married Lorena (Jett) Brassfield.
• In 1900, he was living in Liberty Township, Woodbury County, Iowa and was married to Lorena. He had 2 children with Lorena at that point.
• In 1910, he was still married to Lorena and was living with their two daughters in Sergeant Bluff, Woodbury Township, Woodbury County, Iowa.
• Gipson Bates died June 15, 1910 and is buried at Sergeant Bluff Cemetery, Sergeant Bluff, Woodbury County, Iowa.

Gipson Bates is connected to the Brassfield surname through his daughter Nellie Belle. She married Elvis H. Brassfield. Another very interesting thing is that his second wife Lorena (Jett) Brassfield appears to have been previously married to Nelson P. Brassfield. Nelson was the brother of Elvis H. Brassfield, so Gipson married the former wife of his daughter Nellie's brother-in-law. No blood relationship, but still a complicated situation.

Census Saturday - Hiram Stotler

Today I conducted a search of census records via HeritageQuest online. I was looking for details on Hiram Stotler born in Pennsylvania 3 August 1838 and died in Rockwell City, Calhoun, Iowa 10 June 1920. His picture is to the right, it had been kept safe in a frame by his great granddaughter for many years and it found its way onto my flatbed scanner this afternoon for your viewing enjoyment.

Wisconsin residents, or at least ones that have IP addresses based in Wisconsin, can access a variety of research materials via http://www.badgerlink.net HeritageQuest and Access NewspaperARCHIVE are good tools to use without leaving home, but they take some time to get used to and require some tricks to find information.

In searching for Hiram Stotler, I ran across a common problem when searching census records. The problem is spelling. His last name is listed by the search engine as Stotley in 1870, Statler in 1880, Stoller in 1900, Stotter in 1910 and Stouller in 1920. Fortunately his first name Hiram was spelled the same allowing for a search by birthplace, age and first name. 1920 took the longest to find because both names were misspelled, Hyram Stouller. I did a Calhoun County Iowa search for persons born in Pennsylvania between the ages of 81 and 90 and that revealed the name I was looking for. I was also briefly stumped by the 1860 census, but careful detective work found him living in Piatt County, Illinois near his future wife, Hannah Argo.

The Stotler connection to the Brassfield surname is Hiram Stotler (1838-1920), father of Mary Hay Stotler (1864-1959) (married John Franklin Ross (1859-1934)), mother of Clara Bernice Ross (1897-1994) (married Frank Brown Fowlie (1892-1977)). Frank and Clara's daughter married Elvis John Brassfield (1920-2006).

After the jump I have posted a summary of the census info relating to Hiram Stotler...

J.P. Johnson

JP Johnson

This photo is from the Memories - Brassfield + Hunt photo album. It is cropped from a group photo, but most of the people in the photo are not labeled. There is an X on this person and a label that says GrGrandpa Johnson. Also labeled is Grandpa Hunt. Based on this I am assuming this is Jorgon Peter Johnson, the father of Jennie J. Johnson, who was the wife of John Hunt, father of Thelma Sarah Hunt, who was the mother of Elvis John Brassfield. The photo is undated, but the other photos in the album are mostly pre-1920. Johnson's wife died in 1908 and John Hunt's wife died in 1914, assuming they are not in the photo dates this photo to roughly 1914-1920.

Census Saturday - 1910 Valois D. Parker

Valois Parker and family, early 1900s. See this post for caption details on this photo.

Census information is an important part of genealogy, but it's not always 100% reliable. It can give a glimpse into a day in the life of an ancestor. Census documents are hand written and sometimes difficult to read. They have been scanned from microfilm and sometimes the transfer is not very readable. Each census has different information from one to the next. For example, 1900 lists birth year, but 1901 only lists age. Name spelling is always an issue. Ethnic names are often spelled differently than what is expected. There is also error introduced when the family is not a native speaker of English, like many of the German immigrants in Wisconsin. The census is a valuable source of information, but like every source, it might have errors.

After the jump, there is a census extraction for 1910, Wautoma Township, Waushara County, Wisconsin focusing on the Valois D. Parker family.

Helen Ross

Here's another photo of Helen Ross, probably from the 1920s. Scanned from Clara (Ross) Fowlie's photo album.

One interesting thing I found from the census records is that the Rosses lived near the Whitteds in Lake Creek township, Calhuon county, Iowa. At the time of the 1920 census, Helen Ross was living at home with the most of the Ross family, her parents John and Mary Ross, as well as her siblings Mary, Clara, John (Jr.) and Oliver Ross. Two dwellings away from them was Harold Whitted and his family. Harold's mother had died in 1913. His father Charles and step mother Julia are listed as well as two brothers and two step children.

I thought it was interesting to point out that Helen and Harold were neighbors, at least in 1920. They married in 1939.

The 1930 census poses another question. There is an H. A. Whitted in Lake Creek township. 27 years old with a wife named Emma and a son named Donald. I'll have to check my notes to see if Harold was married before he married Helen. He would have been 27 in 1930 and the middle initial matches. I didn't realize Harold was married once before, so I'll have to double check this.

USGS Geographic Names Information System

The USGS Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a good way to locate things like cemeteries and populated places. As an example, John Hunt was born near Downey, Iowa. A search of GNIS shows a historical town of Downey and a historical post office in Downey. Clicking the GNIS in Google maps shows Downey is a small unincorporated village in Springdale township, Cedar County, Iowa. A Zip+4 search shows that Downey is no longer a valid zip code, to use West Branch, IA instead.

An interesting point is that Downey is less than a mile east of the Cedar / Johnson County line. This researcher lists Johnson County, near Downey, Iowa as John's birthplace citing a family Bible. Looking at the 1870 US Census for Cedar County, Springdale township, the Samuel Hunt family was living there 20 August 1870, listing John Hunt as 10 months old. So, apparently they were living in Cedar County, but John was born in Johnson County. I'm not sure what the county the birth certificate lists.

Census extract for the 1870 census after the jump.

Floyd Brassfield census analysis

Floyd Gipson Brassfield was born 4 April 1898 in Sergeant Bluff, Woodbury County, Iowa. I believe his middle name is derived from his mother Nell's father, Gipson Bates. I am unable to locate Floyd in the 1900 and 1910 census, but it seems reasonable to believe he was in Woodbury County,  Iowa. More details after the jump...