There were two family history discoveries today; one by me and one made by my cousin. First of all, I finally found my father in the 1950 census. Back in April, the US government made public the individual listings of the US census taken in 1950. Within weeks after the release, I had found all of my ancestors who were living in that year. I … Continue reading Two Discoveries in One Day
As I mentioned in an earlier post from about six months ago, I have been working on a complete rewrite of Gathering Leaves (and not just another edition.) My goal is to eliminate repetition, remove superfluous minutia, and strip out all the endnotes (I admit I was in competition with Edward Gibbon for most endnotes ever.) In addition to there being deletions, there are also … Continue reading On Down the Tallapoosa to the Gulf of Mexico
Here is something interesting that I found regarding a third great-grandfather on my mother’s side. His name was Evan Prothro (1788-1864), a.k.a. Evan the Planter, grandson of Evan the Patriot, and father of my great-great-grandmother, Martha Josephine Prothro. He was a plantation owner and slaveholder who lived in the upcountry in South Carolina near Aiken and across from Augusta on the Georgia side of the … Continue reading Three Valuable Sawmills for Sale
Not too long before my mother passed away, she wrote her memoirs on three-hole punch college ruled paper along with photographs and assembled the contents in a 2-inch three-ring binder which she then passed on to me. I have decided to transcribe and present her memoirs here thus allowing her to have her voice heard. The First 50 Years of My Life1928 to 1978Dorothy Patricia … Continue reading My Mother’s Memoir – Part Three
I have found my mother in the U.S. Census for 1950. This time I used the “official” website for the 1950 census (https://1950census.archives.gov/), where they have used “machine learning (AI)” to extract names from the enumeration sheets to build a searchable index. Here, I searched for “Patricia Dobbs” in Washington DC, and I got a few hits for Dobbs or Hobbs, one of which was … Continue reading That Was Too Easy!
I found my maternal grandfather in the 1950 US census using my patented needle in a haystack method. I knew that my grandfather, James Monroe Dobbs, Jr., and his second wife, Helen Mewhinney Dobbs lived somewhere in Temple Texas in 1950. A few days ago I did find my great-grandmother in the 1950 census in the city of Temple residing in a convalescent home shortly … Continue reading Needle In A Haystack
I have located one other great-grandparent in the 1950 US Census. It was not difficult to find my great-grandmother, Catherine “Beanie” Kollros, because I knew the address of her home in Louisville, Kentucky. She and my great-grandfather, Jojo Kollros purchased a home in Louisville in the early 1920s. During the Great Depression, they almost lost the three-story house and they began taking in boarders. To … Continue reading Another Find in the 1950 US Census
Even though access to the US census for 1950 is limited due to the lack of indexes, a few of the states have been indexed and it is a work in progress. For areas that have not been indexed, there is an alternative to having to browse through hundreds of images trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack. At Ancestry.com there is the … Continue reading 1950 Census District Finder
It has been a couple of weeks since the United States Census for 1950 was made available to the public after a 72-year wait. Although it is freely available on several family history websites such as ancestry.com and familysearch.org, there is still a lack of indexes that makes it very difficult to find particular individuals without knowing their address and being able to reference that … Continue reading Found One!
Not too long before my mother passed away, she wrote her memoirs on three-hole punch college ruled paper along with photographs and assembled the contents in a 2-inch three-ring binder which she then passed on to me.I have decided to transcribe and present her memoirs here thus allowing her to have her voice heard. The First 50 Years of My Life1928 to 1978by Dorothy Patricia … Continue reading My Mother’s Memoir – Part Two
Gathering Leaves 