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Weird Findings
I came across the 1930 census that lists my husbands grandfather in the home of his father, both Clarence Mathieus, but the mother was listed as Elizabeth W. Her name was Gertrude Oliver Mathieu.
My other odd finding was discharge papers from the Confederate Army for a gentleman Jas. T. Colley. I also found stock certificates in his daughters names. I have no idea how the papers came to be in my grandmothers possession.
Have you come across any odd things you can't explain? Anyone care to help with and guesses as to the name differential?
My other odd finding was discharge papers from the Confederate Army for a gentleman Jas. T. Colley. I also found stock certificates in his daughters names. I have no idea how the papers came to be in my grandmothers possession.
Have you come across any odd things you can't explain? Anyone care to help with and guesses as to the name differential?
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Randi Rountree Mathieu on
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in 1920 they were together as Clarence and Gertrude. They were happily married until he died in 1991. None of the family has ever heard the name Elizabeth
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Permalink Reply by Cindy Johnston Sorley on
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That is an odd one. I looked up the record and it shows that this Clarence and Elizabeth W had been married 14 years and Clarence the son was nine. Interesting and odd.
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Permalink Reply by Kitah on
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When my Mother died I inherited some records she had that were her Mothers,Clara, one was some birth & death records. One of them has a different Mothers name, Kathyrn, for her brother BUT knowing him I know he was really born to my Grandmother cause he looked just like her & all the siblings!! What bothers me is why my aunt or 'GrandMother ' never got it corrected ,since it must have been a typo error.There were children before & after this uncle, 7 in all.
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When I was visiting my grandmother a few years ago for my grandfather's funeral in Grand Junction, Colorado, my mother and I were sleeping in the family room in the basement. My mother was across the room from me and I kept hearing her say "Sarah, get away from there", "Sarah, come in now". I was like.. mom go to sleep, quit dreaming. Finally after hours of hearing all kinds of this ranting over and over I got up went over to her and told her to quit dreaming. She had not moved all night and was in a deep sleep. We talked about it the next morning and she said.. I never dreamed about anything like that. I mentioned it to my husband the next day and he said... Remember your brother a few years ago in the same room had someone pulling all of his toes and his feet were towards the window and no one could get to him without him seeing them.
It was a freaky experience so I thought.. my grandparents moved into this house from a country about twenty years ago and I know there was a large farm where this subdivision sits. I went to the records in the city to see who sold the land to the developer and from there I found it had been in the family for a few generations and in the 1900 census was a young lady named Sarah age 4 living in the home on the exact property my grandparents were on and she was not in the 1910 census.
Sarah was my ghost.. My grandmother died the next year and I got a hotel for her funeral.
Cindy
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Permalink Reply by Marsha L. Ensminger on
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The 1930 census is the one that listed my father's cousin Elmer as "Eleanor", a female of the correct age. Got his brothers right, but somehow he was replaced.
I just found a 1900 census entry yesterday where I have been able to prove that the month and year of birth is wrong for all four children. It appears to be off by three years on the father. I have no other source for the mother's birth date, but am assuming it's not what was recorded on the census. It has left me wondering who actually provided the info to the enumerator.
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Marsha, I think back to when the census takers came to my house in 2000. My son who was 13 provided the information because we were not home. Can you imagine... a 13 year old boy providing the info .. he might have me as 60 when I was only 39.
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Permalink Reply by Geri Redmond on
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I had a great uncle who was named George Alexander Boyne. When I first found a record of him he was listed as George, oldest son of Robert born in 1870 in the 1880 census. In the 1900 census he's still George. Then I found a newspaper article listing Pete, the son of Robert. Now I'm in search mode looking for a Pete or Peter born to my great-grandfather.
Pete was George! It took quite a bit of digging and who knows why Pete became George's nickname but that's what it was.
I've found many ancestors, especially the women who seem to have totally unrealted names to their given names. I have one that I haven't been able to determine to this day if her given name was Ann Elizabeth or Elizabeth Ann. She went by both as well as Liza, Eliza and Annie. She was born in Canada before the vital records were kept so there's no official record of her birth. On her marriage record it's one name and on her death certificate and tombstone another.
Now, I've found the men are likely to go by their given name or use their middle name whichever they feel like using today.
And, census records can be funny. Daughters listed as sons, sons as daughters. I sincerely believe that people enjoyed having "a bit o fun" with the census takers. One g-g uncle loved giving different nationalities to the census takers. He was actually born in Canada to an Irish/Canadian man and an Irish woman. I think he must have had an Irish accent simply because that's what he heard at home. So with every census he'd tell the census taker a different nationality. In one he's listed as Dutch!
When you get into the Canadian birth records you might even find two listings for an ancestor one with John as the given name and Percival as the middle name, okay good that's the one I'm looking for. The next name down the list is Percival John born on the same day, same parents! So now what's his name?
As for the paperwork for James T Colley either he or his daughters might have been boarders in your grandmothers home and left the paperwork behind when they left. You may notice that in the 1930 census and even before it was very common for families to have boarders. Or even surprisingly servants. You don't normally think of you family having servants, we certainly don't today but more than one of my aunts and uncles had at least one and some more. My grandmother had boarders all through and after WWII.
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Permalink Reply by Cindy Pirani on
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Any live-in help is considered a servant if you want to get technical. Servants are not slaves. They are paid for their work and can be either living in the home or not. We just have more "sophisticated" names for them today. Nannies, Au Pare, housekeepers, maids, butlers, gentleman's gentleman, cooks, etc are all servants. Live in medical assistants, men and women who tend the animals on a farm could be considered servants. It's all the same thing, just different vocabulary.
As for the census mix ups, I get those quite often. Georgia when it is supposed to be George. Tonight I found one that was supposed to be Clyde but the census taker wrote it down as Clyar. The d had a short line making it look like an a and the e looked like an e, but I suppose they were trying to figure out what this name was and decided it was an r. I've also found middle and given names exchanging places. My grandfather hated his given name and permanently referred to it as his middle initial only, rarely telling anyone what it really was. So his middle name became his permanent first name.
Cindy
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Permalink Reply by Deason Hunt on
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I still have not found the answer to this puzzle which came when I first accessed the 1930 census for my Hunt grandparents. I know that my grandfather and grandmother had three children who survived from birth from numerous sources including knowing the three (Dad, my aunt, and my uncle). In the 1930 census, my uncle and aunt were living away from home. My Dad was in his parents' home on the census but there was one additional child, an infant named Marvin, listed as adopted son. Now I didn't access this data until after both grandparents, Dad, and my aunt and uncle were deceased. My mother knew of no story about an adopted son in the family. To this day, after some creative searching, I have no clue to what this census entry means other than the face value of the data.
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Deason, I had the same thing happen to us in Indiana in the 1930 census and found out the adopted child was a Foster child that lived in their home for a year. I asked about the surname being the same and she said it was because he was a cousin of the head of the household. 1930 was a tough time for many... I have 9 siblings or first cousins in an orphanage in Columbus Indiana in 1930.
Deason Hunt said:I still have not found the answer to this puzzle which came when I first accessed the 1930 census for my Hunt grandparents. I know that my grandfather and grandmother had three children who survived from birth from numerous sources including knowing the three (Dad, my aunt, and my uncle). In the 1930 census, my uncle and aunt were living away from home. My Dad was in his parents' home on the census but there was one additional child, an infant named Marvin, listed as adopted son. Now I didn't access this data until after both grandparents, Dad, and my aunt and uncle were deceased. My mother knew of no story about an adopted son in the family. To this day, after some creative searching, I have no clue to what this census entry means other than the face value of the data.
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Cindy,
That's a good idea. I'll look for the cousin connection.
Cindy Johnston Sorley said:Deason, I had the same thing happen to us in Indiana in the 1930 census and found out the adopted child was a Foster child that lived in their home for a year. I asked about the surname being the same and she said it was because he was a cousin of the head of the household. 1930 was a tough time for many... I have 9 siblings or first cousins in an orphanage in Columbus Indiana in 1930.
Deason Hunt said:I still have not found the answer to this puzzle which came when I first accessed the 1930 census for my Hunt grandparents. I know that my grandfather and grandmother had three children who survived from birth from numerous sources including knowing the three (Dad, my aunt, and my uncle). In the 1930 census, my uncle and aunt were living away from home. My Dad was in his parents' home on the census but there was one additional child, an infant named Marvin, listed as adopted son. Now I didn't access this data until after both grandparents, Dad, and my aunt and uncle were deceased. My mother knew of no story about an adopted son in the family. To this day, after some creative searching, I have no clue to what this census entry means other than the face value of the data.
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I just recently found my father's brother's birth record. He was, sadly to live less than a year. The oddity was that I found another birth record for the same child along with the same mother, but the father's first name was totally different, AND this record was in a neighboring state. I know which one is correct because I know which man she married. However, years later when the other children are grown and married, a couple of them are found in a census record for the second man listed as father in the other state record. The correct father is William W, and the one listed as father in the other state birth record is Joseph W. Every other detail is exactly the same in both records. The only differences are which state the record is from and who the father is.
Cindy
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