I have worked diligently searching my family’s history for over ten years.  I joined Ancestry in 2006 and began a more serious search.  On my father’s side of the family his roots were in Milledgeville, Georgia.  I knew that there was woman who had four children by William Steele.  There were stories of her being Native American, a mulatto, or a slave.  We thought her name was Mandy.  I took a DNA test and found out that I have no Native American blood, so the next question was—was she a slave or was she free? By finding the four children I found her real name Sarah or Sallie Keen on the 1870 and 1880 census. 

The next mystery to tackle was whether she was a slave or a free person of color.  There on the 1860 census, listed as free people of color, was a family of Brooks.  All of the family’s first names matched, and there was an additional child that I never knew existed.  Where the name Brooks came from I do not know, but I guess after the Civil War they took on their father’s last name of Steele. 

For many African Americans looking for their ancestors it should be noted that the first name and middle name of all family members are very important. This can be the key to identifying the family in situations where there was a surname change, as was the case with my family.  I even found out that Sarah’s mother changed her last name three times. Jane Mitchell, Brooks or Gilbert was a free person of color—a washer woman that lived to be 116 years of age.  She had two newspaper articles written about her as the oldest person in the county! 

Theresa Steele Page

Question: I have built my family tree on ancestry.com and figured out my great great grandfather’s father was John Logan. I found the family on censuses from 1850 through 1880, the last census surviving before John’s death in 1880. All of the censuses list John’s occupation as a farmer. However, I was recently going through my grandfather’s family heirlooms and found an original newspaper from 1895 with John’s obituary. In it, it says he was a judge. At first I thought maybe I had the wrong John Logan on the census as it’s not an uncommon name, nor with the same name, and ten children all who have the same name (the daughters’ married names mentioned in the obituary also match the 1860 census.) Did all of the census takers just get it wrong?

— Stacie

Answer: How lucky you are to find that obituary!  And nice job of knowing you should not ignore conflicting evidence.

(Note: I’ll attach the obituary at the end of the post.)

Let’s start with the family information and a quick timeline from information we can gather from the obituary.

• 20 Mar 1822 John Logan was born in Connersville, Fayette County, Indiana.
•  About 1839 he moved to Illinois with his father’s family.  (The obit says country, but I suspect county.)  They lived in Henderson and Warren counties
• Abt 1842, he was given an 80 acre farm
• 30 Jan 1844 he married Barbara Davis and the lived on the 80 acre farm for 50 years
• 1863, he was elected county judge, serving two terms.
• 1 May 1895 John Logan dies in Lomax, Henderson County, Illinois.

Barbara and John had 10 children: Susan, Alex, Taylor, Mary, Nancy D, Elmira, John W, Will, Annie, and E.L.  Susan and Alex were living with their parents when John died.

He served two terms as a county judge.

Given this information, we would assume we would find the family in Henderson County, Illinois in the 1850 – 1880 census.

General rule of thumb, work backwards. 

We find John and Anne Logan living in Honey Creek, Henderson County, Illinois in 1880 with six children: Ellicks (is this Alex?), Susan, Mira, John, William and Lincoln (E.L?)

John is 58, born abt 22 in Indiana. His occupation is a Farmer.  Is Anne Logan, his wife, actually Barbara Logan.

Before looking for the next census, I look for a marriage record.  Ancestry.com has an index of Illinois Marriages, 1790 – 1860 that has an entry for a John Logan and a Barbara Ann Davis, married 30 Jan 1844. This sounds like our couple, and explains why John is married to an Anne in 1880.  It also states that there were married in Hancock County.  Henderson and Hancock Counties border each other, so it is not inconceivable that they were married or that they registered their marriage in Hancock County.

I find the 1870 census for John and Ann Logan in Township 8, Range 6, Henderson County, Illinois.

The people in the household (we don’t know the relationships) are: Susan, Nancy, Almira, John, William, Anna, Lincoln, and Terrell.  Terrell is listed last and is not in chronological order.  This may signify that he is not a child, but a relative.  Or not.

In 1860, we find the family again in Township 8 N, 6 W, Henderson County, Illinois.  John and Barbara A are the correct age and both are born in Indiana.  John again is listed as a farmer. The people in the household are Susan, Albert, Taylor, Mary J, Nancy, Almira, John and William.

In 1850, they are living in the same place, they are the correct age, and John is a Farmer.  Others in the household are: Susan, Alexander, Taylor and Mary J.  Notice that Susan is 5, born about 1845.  We know her parents were married in 1844.  That fits nicely.

Let’s build a table of people in the household over the decades:

The family described in the obituary sure looks like the family we find in Henderson County, Illinois, doesn’t it? 

So why is John always listed as a farmer when the obituary lists him as a Judge?  I suspect that being a County Judge was not a full time job, and we know from his obituary that he served two terms, leading us to suspect that he most probably had another occupation. From A History of the Illinois Judicial System, we learn that the Constitution of 1848 and other legislation “established a county court in each county with one county court judge who had a four year term.”  This leads me to believe that he served from 1863 to 1871.

I suspect that being a farmer is how he supported his family over the decades.  However, once an elected official has served as a President, Governor, Judge, etc, they are usually known by that honorific.

The details in the obituary match up exactly with the information we see in the censuses from 1850 to 1880.  There are no other John Logan’s in Henderson County who are candidates.  We can construct a reasonable argument as to why he was listed as a Farmer in the census records and as a Judge in his obituary.

I do not believe either is wrong.  I believe the two John Logans are the same man, and that he was both a Farmer and a Judge.

Happy Searching!

 — Ancestry Anne

The obituary, in 3 parts:

My name is Tom McNamara. My paternal grandparents passed away when I was young, and my father never talked about his ancestors other than they had emigrated from County Clare Ireland during the potato famine.

My wife and I were planning a trip to Ireland so I joined Ancestry.com to find my roots. With the help of census records, passenger lists, and family trees, I was able to discover that my great-great-grandfather (also named Tom McNamara) was born in Kimaley, a little village in County Clare. A trip to that village was now on our itinerary.

When we arrived in County Clare our first stop was Bunratty Castle. On the castle grounds was a pub with the same surname as ours, so we checked it out. Armed with the knowledge from research and a lot of Irish, we chatted with the couple next to us. This gentleman’s best friend was also named Tom McNamara. The friend ‘Tom Mac’ lived on the ancestral lands in Kilmaley! They took another look at me and knew I was related.

They called their friend and we got to meet him the next day. And you know, he did look like me! Our great-great-grandfathers were brothers! On Tom Mac’s acreage was the original manor house built in the 1700s and the family cemetery. I got to see the house where my ancestors lived and the graveyard where they were buried. The tour was fabulous.

Thanks to Ancestry.com and a newly discovered distant cousin, I had one of the most unforgettable experiences of my life.

It’s a New Year and I know you may have a genealogy resolution or two on your plate.

Maybe you should consider blogging?  Or restart a blog you’ve let lapse?

Check out my Livestream presentation Cousin Bait: Blogging to Find Your Family or the PDF of the presentation.

My sample blog from the presentation is at cousinbaitforgenealogist.blogspot.com

I will also recommend a couple of blog posts by Amy Coffin on her blog The We Tree Genealogy Blog:

• How to Write a “Cousin Bait” Genealogy Blog Post
• Why I Blog: Cousin Bait Reels in the Big One

You should also check out the GeneaBloggers site which is run by Thomas MacEntee

The Genealogy Blog Roll might give you some ideas on what you want to name your blog, or blogs you might want to use as inspiration.

Once you’ve started your blog, you can sign up to have your blog listed on Suggest A Blog on GeneaBloggers.

Send me an email Ask Ancestry Anne and let me know what your blog is and I’ll take a look.

Don’t be shy!  If you don’t tell your ancestors stories, who will?

Happy Searching.

— Ancestry Anne

Growing up in Illinois, my family’s origins were almost invisible. I knew the names of my grandparents and great-grandparents, but I still wondered how we got here. I heard we came from Ireland or Germany or England, but those places seemed far off. In truth, it was like my family had sprung out of the ground in America, grilling burgers and going bowling.

It was only after my grandma passed away that I began thinking about her maiden name: McDonald. I read through books and websites about Scottish clans, with their images of tartans and kilts and bagpipes. I was pretty certain we belonged to Clan Donald, one of the oldest and most powerful of the Highland clans. But I really wanted more than words – I wanted proof. And that became a problem because I could only trace my McDonald ancestors back to the 1890s to the exotic locale of Missouri.

This all changed the day my mom and Aunt Donna discovered a letter in a box of old family photos. The letter said that my great-great-great-great-grandparents were named Hiram and Nancy McDonald. I went to Ancestry.com, and soon I found census and marriage records showing that my ancestors Hiram and Nancy lived in Lincoln County, Missouri, beginning in the 1830s.

Fantastic! I had found my family. But it wasn’t enough. If I were going to uncover a link to Clan Donald, I’d first need to find out who Hiram’s parents were, and where they lived before the 1830s — before Missouri. But how to do that?

I turned to the 1830 census – the census taken just before the earliest record I’d located for Hiram and Nancy. But there were no McDonald households in Lincoln County. The closest I got were two households headed by people named “McDanel.”

Now, my initial thought was to dismiss this find and try to figure out some other way to find Hiram and Nancy’s family. But then I looked more closely at the McDanel households. The first was headed by Cyrus McDanel, a young man with a wife and children. The second was headed by Elizabeth McDanel, a woman in her 40s with a household of 11 young adults and children.

What if. … What if my ancestor Hiram was one of them? And what if Cyrus was his brother? What if the census taker had just gotten the family name wrong?

I kept researching. I found coincidences that I couldn’t ignore: Cyrus and Elizabeth were listed only a page apart in the 1830 census. Samuel K. Tilford was Cyrus’s neighbor – and shared a last name with the woman Hiram would marry in the same county three years later. More details added up in online records and at courthouses, and an anonymous tip in an online tree led me to a county in Virginia. Eventually I followed the family all the way back to Scotland … but not quite as quickly as it now sounds.

Suffice it to say, I learned my lessons. Spelling isn’t everything, names change and it pays to have an open mind. If I hadn’t been desperate for clues, I may have never looked at those two McDanels in the 1830 census. If I hadn’t researched the McDanels, I may have never made my connection to the past. And I might still be here scratching my head, wondering exactly how we got here, where we were from and how I could learn more.

— Ryan Littrell

You can read more about Ryan Littrell’s journey in his new book Reunion: A Search for Ancestors. Learn more about his research in this interview with the Barefoot Genealogist, Crista Cowan.

Question: What do the numbers in column 30 in the 1910 census mean?  I have many relatives with different numbers in this column

— Jackie

Answer: Column 30 specifies whether the person owns (O) or rents (R) a home.  But I suspect that you are referring to numbers such as the ones written in on the right hand side. They look as if they are written in a different handwriting than the census itself and they don’t appear in every column.

A little research led me to Census Tick Marks and Codes – Revisited Yet Again! by Elizabeth Shown Mills where she discusses similar numbers on the 1900 census.  Some analysis led her to the number there, so let’s try it here.

Given that the codes do not appear on lines with no occupations, I hypothesize that they are occupation codes. We can create a chart to compare them easily.

You’ll notice that both Cooks have the code: 14-0-7-X and that the last three nurses are 1-5-6-X.  However, the first nurse is 9-5-6-X.  Am I wrong or did someone write this down wrong?

If you check other pages and the same occupation/industry pair you see the same codes. 

Now this doesn’t add anything new to your knowledge of your ancestor, but it does give you a place to start if you can’t read the handwriting.  Look for the same code, and maybe you can decipher the occupation that way. And nice job of looking at the columns on the census and every little detail!

While we’re looking at details, you may have also noticed that we have indexed a few more columns on the 1940 census, including marital status, street, occupation, industry, whether the house was owned or rented, and highest grade completed.

If I enter “Lexington, Rockbridge, Virginia” for Lived In and “Houston Street” for Street and mark both exact, I can see everyone who lived on the same street as my great grandparents in 1940. This can help you locate other relatives and who lived around them.

I know my grandfather was a rug weaver in a carpet mill in 1940. If I put in the exact location and “Weaver” and mark it exact, I get a list of everyone in that town who was a Weaver.  I suspect these are the people he worked with and knew. 

The details are always important!

Happy Searching!

— Ancestry Anne