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
On April Fools’ Day 2022, the government made public the records of the United States Census for 1950. That night I made two discoveries. The first one is that it is almost impossible to find a particular household in the U.S. Census for 1950 without the aid of an index. The second one was a letter my step-grandmother wrote shortly after my maternal grandfather’s death … Continue reading An Old-school Southern Gentleman
One of the things that I learned about my ancestor, Col. David Dobbs, besides him being once a sheriff and later on the chairman of the Democratic Party in Cobb County, was that in 1859, he and several other citizens of Cobb County were authorized by the state of Georgia to build a railroad from Marietta to the Alabama state line. The legislation was entitled … Continue reading Once I Built a Railroad
I found this online tool called Remini that can be used to enhance old photos. It is free-to-try, so I tried it out with some old photos. The original photos, some over 150 years old, are a little blurry and thus the facial features are a tad fuzzy. The results were amazing. I had been told that my maternal grandfather’s mother was very beautiful, but … Continue reading All I Have is a Photograph
Here is what I found when recently searching for J.M. Dobbs, Sr. in Google Books. Google has a vast collection of old books scanned and indexed from public and private libraries throughout the country. I had thought that when my great-grandfather took a presidential appointment and left Atlanta, Georgia, for Valparaiso, Chile, in the spring of 1893, he had sold his share of a lumber … Continue reading The Dobbs Lumber Company v. Appling
Gathering Leaves 