The 1950 Federal Census

Yes, the 1950 U.S. Census has been released to the public.  There’s just one slight problem, it isn’t indexed yet, which means the you can’t search it by name yet.  According to a podcast that I heard today, the indexing should be complete by mid-June.  Until then, you need to know where your ancestor lived in 1950, and get the Enumeration District number.  When you search by E.D., you will have to browse through the entire district to find the house number and street that you are looking for.  It’s not as difficult as it sounds, so give it a try.

I have been looking forward to this census, because my parents married in 1948, and my oldest sibling was born in 1949, so they should be enumerated.  I also know the address in Brooklyn is 470 Rugby Rd.  They lived with my dad’s sister, Aunt Margie and her husband Merritt Whitman, and their daughter - my cousin Linda.

I entered the Brooklyn address to get the Enumeration District number, which turns out to be 24-1688.  Then I searched this E. D., which consists of about 50-60 pages. Their address is listed on page 15:

That is the page and below is the address that I’m looking for:

 Can you read what it says for 470 Rugby Rd?  It has two family numbers because is is a two family house. One family upstairs and one downstairs.  NO ONE HOME, I never saw that before on a census record, but it does say “see sheet 80 Line 1 and Line 3.  Only problem is that I don’t know where Sheet 80 is, not to mention line 1 and line 3.

Looks like I’m going to have to wait for the indexing to be complete.  Story of my genealogical life.

New York City Municipal Archives

I recently saw a few posts on Facebook from different genealogy groups, that the New York City Municipal Archives is digitizing their birth, marriage, and death records, from 1855 - 1949, to put their website.  The collection is searchable and FREE!  Yes, you read it right, free.

The thing that you need for now is the certificate number.  When you search on Ancestry or Family Search and find the record, you will find a certificate number for the birth, marriage, or death.  You will need to put the type of event (BMD), the year, and the certificate number to search to enter into the search.  You will get a good digitized (and downloadable) copy of the certificate.  The documents are in PDF format.  According to their website, the digitizing process is 70% complete as of this date.

So in the last few days, I have downloaded sixteen documents.  Most are on my mom’s side, because they stayed in Brooklyn after sailing across the pond.  I’ve found some interesting things too.  I found out that my great grandfather, Edward McConville and his sister, Mary Emma, were both married in the same church, by the same Priest, in Brooklyn about three years apart.  I was also able to get Edward’s father, Peter’s death certificate from 1874, which has his parents listed (with his mother’s maiden name).  This told me that my research was good, because these are the same names I had gotten by tracking the family back through British census records.

The last thing I’ll mention is that my great grandfather, Edward McConville died 30 Dec 1941 in Brooklyn, although he lived in Jersey City.  My mom told me that he he had some senility issues and he would always try to leave the house, but he wouldn’t go out without his hat.  So her grandmother would get her to hide his hat so that he would not wander off.  Apparently he found his hat and wandered off one night.  Mom said he would try to get back “home” to Brooklyn, and this time he made his escape and made it to his old neighborhood in Brooklyn.  I was told by Aunt Florence that he was found on the street by the church where he and Hanna were married.  The death certificate is not specific about whether he was found on the street or inside a building, or what time he was found, but it mentions 371 Union Ave and it is described as “Bar and Grill”.  I’m not sure what was at that location at the time, but looking at Google Earth for the location of the church where he was married, it looks to be within a few blocks of where the church was located.  So I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

More about my Bradley family from Minersville

 I recently received a message through Newspapers.com from a second cousin in my Bradley line.  She let me know that I had a photo posted in my blog, who was not who I thought it was.  After messaging back and forth several times, I finally got it right.  Then we kept messaging back and forth, and I learned more about my family - not dates and places, but stories.  They make you feel like part of the family.

James Bradley was my great great grandfather, married Ann Pepper and together they had 8 children, including my great grandmother Madge (Marcella).  Most news clippings that I found about him say that he was “of the Delaware” near Minersville.  I never knew what that meant, was it the Delaware River? The Delaware Indians? I had no idea, until I asked my new found cousin.  Apparently it is a little area near Minersville, where the Irish lived. Probably an unincorporated area, possibly in Cass Township.

I found an obit for James that I had never seen before and it illustrates the whole “of the Delaware” thing:

now I know what they are talking about.  But this little article tells me that he was a pioneer of the area, and that he died in Pottsville Hospital.  The other thing about his death is the cross on his grave.  I had posted a picture of it before.  

Here it is again,  just metal pipes with a small plaque with J Bradley on it.  I now know that James’ two sons, Joseph and James, were both blacksmiths and they made this cross for their father’s grave.

One more thing and I’ll call it a night.  I also found a small snippet in the Pottsville Republican”, it tells me that James became a U.S. citizen in December 1889:

I thought this was great.  Next time I go through Pottsville, I’m going to stop at the courthouse and see if I can get his citizenship papers. 

Old Maps

 I have read articles in genealogy magazines about old maps and how they can be helpful in finding the area where ancestors lived, especially in rural, farming areas. There were several companies that produced them.  One of the more well known companies was Sanborn, and these were detailed maps of U.S. cities in the 1800s and 1900s.  Sanborn maps were created to allow fire insurance companies to assess their total liability in urbanized areas of the U.S, according to Wikipedia.  Honestly, I have never used these before, mainly because most of my family (both sides) wound up living in larger cities with actual street addresses, like Jersey City NJ, Scranton PA, and Brooklyn NY.  I didn’t need a map to find a street address  in a large city, but when it comes to rural area like Sandford, NY and Susquehanna, PA, I need more help than a GPS program can give me.

One of the other companies that created maps was F. W. Beers.  These maps show the general topography of the area, with roads, town names, bodies of water, railways, etc....  These maps can also have property owners/residents names on them, which is the part I like.  

I was actually asking about the Beers maps while at the court house, but they did not have any.  I didn't think of Google until I got home - I guess I really am getting old.  When I got home to New Jersey I thought of Googling old maps of Susquehanna County PA, and I found a map from 1872.

If you look in the blue area of the map you can see M. Reilly in the top left corner, and down to the right, you can see E Stack.

Now you can see the resident's names located on the map.  The reason that I used these two names is that Michael Reilly (my great great grandfather) has a son Thomas, and in 1892 he will marry Edward Stack's daughter, Mary Ann.  I guess that single men and single women were far and few between and this visual aid shows that to some degree.  This scenario has repeated itself  several times in my previous generations with co-workers and boarders, and has since mutated into computer dating and such. 

But back in the day it was a realtor’s dream: location, location, location.

Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania

In my last post, I told you that I recently found an obit for my great grandmother, Mary Jane Reilly, and that I found out that she was born in Susquehanna, PA. Last week, I drove up to Scranton, PA and drug my sister, Pat, with me to Susquehanna County, to look for some Reilly relics and fossils in the county courthouse in Montrose.  It was only about a 40 minute drive from Pat’s house to Montrose.  The courthouse was almost empty, I guess everyone was doing some Christmas shopping – so was I. We were able to park right out in front where there was metered parking. I brought a fist full of quarters with me because I figured that’s what would happen. When I went to the parking meter I found that I could park for two hours for a quarter. This place is like Mayberry, at the Jersey Shore you need an app that’s connected to a credit card to use the parking meters; and it’ll cost you a little more than a quarter for two hours, hence the credit card.

Everyone there was very nice and helpful, but we really didn’t find anything. I was hoping to find property records for the farm that they lived on in Great Bend, but there were no deeds to be found. The last office that we visited was historical records, and the woman had nothing there either. She did tell us that we might want to visit the Susquehanna historical society, which was right across the street from the courthouse. We walked across the street, and on the way, I put another quarter in the meter just in case.

When we went into the historical society, very nice lady showed us the file card system for births, deaths, marriages, and ODDS – which was a little articles about various people in the area.  If you found something that you were interested in, you would tell the woman and she would get the article from the other room for you and make copies.

The first thing that I found was an obituary for Mary Jane’s father, Michael Reilly.  He died on 30 June 1903 at the home of his son, T. J. Reilly in Susquehanna Boro.  I know this is her father because she is listed as one of the survivors as Mrs. M. T. O’Day of Jersey City.  Here is the obit:

Since I was in the area, and my O’Dea ancestors lived across the river in Broome County New York, I thought I would look for any deaths under the O’Dea name.  I was looking for Catherine O’Dea, mother of  Michael O’Dea (who would marry Mary Jane).  Apparently spelling really doesn’t matter much with O’Dea / O’Day or Reilly / Riley, they are pretty much interchangeable, so you have to check both spellings. I came across this file card under O’Day:

My first thought was that there must be a mistake, Catherine had recently had a baby (Mike’s little brother, Daniel) I always thought that she must’ve died in childbirth, because Daniel was born in June 1853, wrong again. There was a long article about this railroad accident, downright gruesome in it’s detail. Suffice it to say, that five people were killed instantly, one of whom was our great great grandmother Catherine. The article says the train was leaving Susquehanna Depot on its way to Gulf Summit in New York when, apparently, the boiler exploded, killing five instantly and injuring many others.

Here is a snippet from article that I found in the paper:

Catherine had two small children at home, our great grandfather, Michael, who was two years old, and Daniel, who was two weeks old at most. Why was she out on the train by herself? Was she going to see a doctor maybe? I don’t know, but I’m glad she didn’t take the children with her - or I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it.

My Great Grandmother Mary Jane Reilly O’Dea

 I recently subscribed to genealogy bank.com.  I had a subscription before - mainly because one of the newspapers included is the Jersey Journal (from Jersey City).  I allowed it to lapse, mostly for cost savings.  But they emailed me with an offer I couldn’t refuse - two months free.  Okay, so I saved ten bucks.

At one point, I realized that I had never seen my great grandmother’s obituary, which probably would have been in the aforementioned Jersey Journal. I know this because my cousin Linda had told me she died in Jersey City, and I had gotten her death certificate from the NJ State Archives. 

I searched on genealogybank.com for her obit and found this:

Pretty good.  Now mind you, her death certificate gives her place of birth as Pennsylvania, but I never knew where.  Now I know she was born in Susquehanna, Pa.  I was aggravated that I didn’t think of Susquehanna in the first place.  After all, I knew that her future husband (and my great grandfather, Michael O’Dea) was born just across the river in Sandford, NY, but his father, mother, and step mother are all buried in Susquehanna Pa.  it makes perfect sense, but I never even thought of it.

Now that I know where she was born, I can check the 1860 census in Susquehanna County for Mary Jane and her family.  I found them in a town called Great Bend in Susquehanna County. Mary lives there with her parents, Michael and Bridget, and her seven siblings: James age 11, Daniel age 10, Michael age 8, Martin age 6, John age 5, Susan age 3, and Bridget age 1.  Her father is a farmer, so I guess they’ll have plenty of help on the farm.  I tried to locate the family in 1870, but no luck yet. 

The next time I find Mary Jane is the. 1880 census, but she is no longer in Susquehanna, has moved to the big city and changed her name.  She has married Michael O’Dea and they now live at 284 Bowery St. in Newark, NJ.  Yes, I was surprised too, I thought they went right to Jersey City from Pa - probably because that was where the train went.  By the way the census also says that they were married during the census year.

I think that’s enough for now.  I’ pretty sure we just witnessed the start of the great O’Dea migration to New Jersey, which will settle in Jersey City for for about 70 years before moving to the shore area.

The Whartons

You’re right, the name doesn’t sound familiar.  But I did mention them quite awhile ago when I was talking about my great grandmother, Hannah Sullivan McConville.  I had interviewed my mom’s cousin Florence (we called her Aunt Florence).  Florence told me that Hannah lived in London, and she and her sister were sent to America in the 1870’s to be nannies for the children of Willie and Annie Wharton, who were their cousins.  I think their parents had passed away and that was why they went across the pond.

Well, I went searching records to verify this story and I finally found an 1880 US Census record for Brooklyn, NY. and although her sister Mary Ann is not with her, Hannah is living with George and Ellen Wharton, and their two daughters:  Kate, who is 3 and Maggie, 1 year old. I found that instead of Willie and Annie,  their names are actually George and Ellen...Well, Aunt Florence was close.

That was all I could find, until started looking into George and Ellen.  George works in a segar store (cigar) and Ellen is keeping house.  After digging around, I found that George died in May 1903 and was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn. I found a memorial in Find A Grave, but no photo of the headstone.  I decided to put in a photo request through Find A Grave in March of 2018, and that is where I was stuck until a week ago when I got an email from Find A Grave saying that my request had be fulfilled.

I check the website and found this photo:

Kinda dark and hard to see, so I lightened it up a bit and got this:

Still hard to see, but I can read most of it:

George Wharton

Also his wife

Ellen Wharton

& her sister

Bridget Sullivan

SULLIVAN!  That's it, that's the connection, Ellen is a Sullivan.  Then I searched Ellen Sullivan Wharton and found her marriage to George Wharton in the NY Index - 28 May 1876.  Using Family Search, I was able to get a marriage record and place of birth for her and George - Carlow, County Kerry, Ireland. 

After digging around and getting more info, I searched Ancestry again, this time I entered all of the information that I had, and found Ellen in another tree on Ancestry. Not only that, but this person is also a DNA match.  She is listed as 5th to 8th cousin of mine.  

My thought is that Ellen (and Bridget) are not cousins, but they are Hanna's aunts.  Sisters to her father, Michael.  The only problem with this theory is that the marriage record for Ellen lists her parents as Timothy and Margaret Lyons.  My tree lists them as Timothy and Margaret Devin.  My only source for Margaret's last name is a tree done by another of my mom's cousins before I started my research, and I don't know where she found Devin as the surname.  Actually they could both be somewhat accurate, she may have had a previous marriage in there somewhere, I don't know.

What I do know is that DNA doesn't lie, so I am on the right track