A Find and a Surprise!
I've bemoaned the fact that I wasn't able to find many of my Ohio and Michigan ancestors recently. I also said that I was done looking for them until those states were indexed. Well...
I had some free time last night and a hankering to tackle my missing people. The only problem is I've looked through all the EDs where I thought they'd be, and in some cases neighboring EDs just in case. Since I'd seemingly exhausted all avenues, I didn't really know what to do next. I still don't in several cases, except one. My grandfather and his family were living on W South St. in Jackson, Michigan in 1940. In 1940 that was on the city line. I looked through the EDs within the city limits which I thought applied to W South St. and found nothing - not even the street!
Well, last night I re-examined some ED maps and saw that there was one for a place called "Southland-Woodland." Wait a minute, W South St. is awfully close to a Woodland Cemetery - could there be a connection? So I looked at that map and sure enough, it seemed to cover my area.
From there I went to the ED for Southland-Woodland. Good news is that that the ED began with W South St. Bad news is that it is 74 pages long. Best news? My grandfather and his family were at the top of page two!
But wait, who's that at the bottom of the household? Turns out, my great-grandfather's mother, Mary/Marion Wood Allen was living with the family. Since she disappeared from city directories I had assumed she had died before the 1940 US Census.
Finding out that Mary was alive in Jackson in 1940 is wonderful. I had been looking for her death information in Manistee pre-1940. Time to change the game plan!
I had some free time last night and a hankering to tackle my missing people. The only problem is I've looked through all the EDs where I thought they'd be, and in some cases neighboring EDs just in case. Since I'd seemingly exhausted all avenues, I didn't really know what to do next. I still don't in several cases, except one. My grandfather and his family were living on W South St. in Jackson, Michigan in 1940. In 1940 that was on the city line. I looked through the EDs within the city limits which I thought applied to W South St. and found nothing - not even the street!
Well, last night I re-examined some ED maps and saw that there was one for a place called "Southland-Woodland." Wait a minute, W South St. is awfully close to a Woodland Cemetery - could there be a connection? So I looked at that map and sure enough, it seemed to cover my area.
From there I went to the ED for Southland-Woodland. Good news is that that the ED began with W South St. Bad news is that it is 74 pages long. Best news? My grandfather and his family were at the top of page two!
But wait, who's that at the bottom of the household? Turns out, my great-grandfather's mother, Mary/Marion Wood Allen was living with the family. Since she disappeared from city directories I had assumed she had died before the 1940 US Census.
Finding out that Mary was alive in Jackson in 1940 is wonderful. I had been looking for her death information in Manistee pre-1940. Time to change the game plan!
Finding your second great grandmother in 1940 when you didn't know when she had died - how great is that? Good luck with the revised game plan!
ReplyDeleteCongrats on the find! More doors opening...
ReplyDeleteNow that's perseverance! Glad it was mixed with some serendipity for you. I groan just to think of searching through anything non-indexed. We have it so easy with online research any more!
ReplyDelete