TRYING THE 1950 CENSUS SEARCH ON ANCESTRY TM GENEALOGY - SOME SUCCESS SOME FAILURE

I've been trying the Ancestry TM genealogy databases once a week to see what progress that big database company is making on indexing the 1950 census, which came out on the NARA web site on April first.  (Disclosure:  The title of this blog is not in reference to that site.  Ancestry TM is one of many databases that I use.)

Having found some, but not all of the people I sought to find, I kept trying Ancestry TM to see what, if anything, would come up that I had not found on the NARA web site.  Yesterday I was pleased to have brought up one of the people who I sought, and indeed the surname was spelled incorrectly enough that I might have played games with it a dozen or more different ways in hopes of finding it. So in this case, Ancestry's implied soundex did make a difference.

Interestingly, however,  the person's son,  living independently, who I did find on a NARA exploration, did not come up on Ancestry, though I spelled that surname the same way as it had come up on NARA. And he was living in the same town, not far away. 

A further surprise was that a relative of mine was counted TWICE, at two different locations in the same small town, listed as a 'lodger.'  In one it says she is 24, in the other that she is 30.  The 24 is closer to the mark, making me think that the family where she is listed as 30 years old might have talked to the census taker rather than the census taker talking to her.  Had she been in the process of moving?  Neither family is related to her, so ???

Ancestry TM is suggesting that you send them your e-mail address in order to be informed about the 1950 census.  I simply looked at the numbers and saw that about one and a half million had been indexed. About 151 million people were counted that  1950 census and no doubt about it, there must be many people working on it. So, I think I must have just been lucky enough to have been searching for a surname that comes up within the count.

Another surprise was learning that a person who I knew to have been divorced three times had two more children with the third, brief, husband. They were born after the 1940, and I know the husband was living in a boarding house that year.  I do wonder what the arrangement was.  This woman had a very hard life.  Her age is a little off on the 1950, and it says she was born in the United States, though I have her coming into New York Harbor in her mother's arms, and thus believe she was born in Europe.  Did she perhaps not know where she was born?  Since I cannot find any baptismal for her in Europe but also cannot find any baptismal for her two siblings who were born in the United States, I wonder...

The other pleasure was finding two individuals who had middle initials listed.  I had been told that the M for one stood for Mary, and that is was an honorific for her mother.  That has pretty much been proven.  However, it was only a childhood memory - I must have been ten years old -  when I asked an adult what the middle name of the man was.  I was told Peter and that makes sense of the P.

I'll be reporting on 1950 census progress again.

C 2022 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy

BYPASSING GENEALOGY USING REUNION REGISTRIES: ADOPTION #2

Why is this post number two instead of further down the line? 

Well, if an adoption happens in the United States, much depends on the rules of the state and when the adoption occurred. A person's adoption can be Closed or Open.

Closed Adoption is the traditional way. Closed means that the adoptee may be entitled only to non-identifying information. That means the identity of the birth mother and father were not meant to be revealed. The birth parents were guaranteed privacy. It was thought to be a clean and permanent break that was best for everyone. 

Information such as "mother is recent immigrant and unwed who has TB" is non-identifying. "Mother is Susan Smith, a resident of County TB hospital" is identifying.

After birth, a child is usually issued a "birth certificate" (and some hospitals also gave parents one from the hospital - I have both) but rather than certifying a birth it's intended to certify the parents and who is responsible. A mother can claim a father is unknown or name someone - her husband or another man - and who knows what's true. (Actress Marilyn Monroe/ Norma Jeane Baker faced this issue. DNA testing may have the answer.) But original birth certificates are right about who the mother is, unless there were quite unusual circumstances in which a deception was pulled off. (Such as in the biblical story of Moses.)

When a legal adoption occurs, a new "birth certificate" is issued, called an AMENDED birth certificate. The adopting parents' names go on the paperwork and a new certificate with a new number is issued. If you're an adoptee this is the birth certificate, you'll get from your state of birth. 

Open Adoption means that information about the birth mother and father will be available but that doesn't mean at no charge or instantly or that the person will be alive and locatable.

I've heard of modern adoption agreements that include yearly photos and letters sent by adoptive parents to the birth mother. Some make agreements that the child may only have the information from their parents after the age of 18. This all in the last 20-30 or so years when children to adopt have become more difficult to find. Why? Because of legal abortion. Because there is less stigma about illegitimacy and more unwed mothers decide not to allow adoption and raise children as single moms. And because, oh I hate to say this but, adoptive parents still prefer babies and it's become competitive. An older child in foster care may be available but well, it's like some people only want a puppy from a private owner and won't take a shelter dog. (My dog is a shelter dog. I'm her third human mom.) Oh. I know it can be more complicated than that but having had a friend who earnestly and expensively tried to adopt and failed I think it's gotten ridiculous. 

Sometimes a parent doesn't tell the child they're adopted. I've heard of deathbed confessions. I've also heard of a parent going through a divorce suddenly telling a teenager before a custody battle. And DNA testing has revealed affairs and now plays a part in searches and reunions.

There are a few ideas about why an adoptee might want to know those who provided their genetic inheritance and why they have a right to know. One reason that seems less important these days is medical information. Getting the medical information used to be a good reason to unseal a Closed Adoption and appealing to a sympathetic judge sometimes worked. But rarely. You see, our medical knowledge has rapidly advanced and now it's understood that a good yearly physical is better information than the old idea that a person should know that a birth parent had certain medical condition.

Same goes for mental illness. What difference could it make to know mom had schizophrenia or dad was a vet with shell shock? Maybe it's genetics. Maybe not.

I'll refute that idea that medical and mental information about parents isn't a valid reason to unseal a Closed Adoption a bit in a future post.

Yes, sometimes a genealogist can run with some basic information and quicky come up with the answer of who or where a parent is. It depends on if the person was told the truth in the first place to tell the genealogist the truth. 

Because one person I did a search for relayed the truth and because of the Internet, my all time record for finding a father who was never in his daughter's life was one afternoon. It made me wonder why her mother wasn't more curious - or if mom knew where he was all along.

Working with another genealogist years ago, we together were about ninety percent certain in one afternoon that a birth mother belonged to a certain family. 

In the first case the woman could've picked up a phone. 

In this second case we thought that if we went to a certain house, we would encounter the family members who might know something. (Not that we would. The next step was being contemplated. Showing up on a doorstep demanding answers is not such a good idea.)

In either case, the adoptee was more than surprised. Unable to cope. Frozen in indecision. Due to the rapidity. 

If a person was adopted in a state where adoptions were Closed, you may have no chance of opening up the files. Which is where an adoption registry can be the answer. Many states have them.

There are possible ways around it, which I'll get into, but before I do I want to say that I think being in therapy, be you the birth parent or the adoptee, is a good idea. The not knowing really bothers some people and can create anxiety. Sometimes a person fears what they will learn. They may feel guilty for wanting to know. The adoptive parents may be uncomfortable or object. A person might not know how to integrate a found birth parent into their life or find they don't want to. A spouse may not be on board. A birth mother may have been under legal age and forced by her parents to give up a baby, married later, and never told her husband. Parents who put their children in an institution may have suffered despite this being their only option. Rape is the reason for too many conceptions and that trauma may be too much to deal with.

I can't take a poll but it's my guess that unwed motherhood was and is the number one reason children were given up, poverty being the second. 

So many children are now born to single mothers - without a father in their lives - but into the 1970's there was still a stigma about unwed motherhood. In the 1960's and 1970's parents were still sending underage and unwed daughters away to other states to have babies. To this day there are homes for unwed mothers run by religious organizations and where abortion is condemned. As I hear it there is immense pressure for mothers to give up their babies for adoption in these places. 

A person doesn't know how knowing their birth information will affect them. This is why having a therapist to talk to can possibly help.

So, about those Closed Adoptions. 

My friend's husband, previously mentioned, remembers having a younger brother. Relatives told him years later that this brother was taken away from their mother in the 1960's and put into foster care. He assumes the little brother was adopted. This all happened in the state of Florida. My strong suggestion was to sign up for the Florida Adoption Reunion Registry. (FARR) Even if this brother was not adopted, his half-brother has no right to ask for his birth certificate in Florida. If he were allowed to have it, the existence of it with their mother's name on it would tell the story that he lived out his life in foster care. There wouldn't be a name change. We could find him. 

My suggestion was to sign up with FARR. 

FLORIDA ADOPTION AND REUNION REGISTRY

California also has an adoption registry. Using it, a young man who signed up as soon as legally able was reunited with a brother within a week.

I know you can research it and locate other registries.

Here is a free one that's possibly the oldest and largest!

INTERNATIONAL SOUNDEX REUNION REGISTRY

Soundex is a search method for bringing up surnames that sound alike.

C 2021

Adoption Strategies - AWG

WHAT'S IN A NAME CHANGE - WHAT MADES ME MAD - PART THREE

Use the Google Blogger search feature to bring up other posts on name changes, surnames, and part one and two of this tome!)


Besides ethnic pride and the discovery of roots, another reason for name changes, both given and surname, that I've encountered is numerology.  In part one of this post on NAME CHANGES, I mentioned that it seems acceptable to change your name completely to have success in Hollywood.  Well, believe it or not, some of those changes included the possibility that changing one's "numbers" would be good luck.  Numerology is the study of how letters add up as numbers.


I've known people who take numerology seriously when naming their babies, naming a business, or renaming themselves, because they want a happier life.  Imagine if you will growing up with a name that has felt truly impossible.  You're wondering what your parents were thinking when they gave you that name.  If you're really going to start over with a whole new name, why not take everything into consideration, even if it turns out there's nothing to it?


I've known artists and writers who have a career or "brand" name different from what's on their driver's license, and sometimes it's just so they can hide their other self and way of making money from a boss!  (More difficult these days than ever to do.)


To me being able to make enough money and get past being in survival and subsistence and moving forward in your life is a great reason to change your name, and it doesn't imply that you're greedy, materialistic, or a jerk.


There's only one reason a name change is bad and wrong and that's when the intention is to hide criminal activity.


C 2017  Ancestry Worship Genealogy BlogSpot All Rights Reserved.

WHAT'S IN A NAME CHANGE - WHAT MAKES ME MAD - PART TWO

(Continued - part one was posted about a month ago.)


I know of a Celtic /Irish American author who has been defamed by one biographer by adding a second L...


If you are researching a "difficult to pronounce or spell" surname, first, use on online translator that has speech capability or talk to someone of the ethnic heritage (that may mean contacting a Native American tribe or special ethnic research group), and get the SOUND of the name.  Write down what it sounds like to you.  Ask other people to write down what they think they are hearing. 


Use SOUNDEX to bring up names that sound like that.  (Be aware that Soundex (s) aren't perfect.  One is considered to be Germanized.)  Try to imagine what it might be to a German speaker who is a census taker.


Become sensitized through the use of SOUNDEX or database opportunities to bring up names that are close in spelling.  Though so many names are common, in particular names based on professions, that it doesn't imply descendants are from one massive family.  However, you may find that the name has changed through time as people you're related to moved from country to country.


When it comes to snobbery, I've heard many people criticized for have a van, von, or other prefix indicating land ownership, if not also nobility, before their surname.  Some families dropped this when they accepted the democratic ideals of the United States of America, but if your family was using it in the Old Country, then that's your name!  Remember that wealth and elite status then isn't what it is now.  They could have had inherited land but be broke.)


(part three coming!)

NEWSPAPER DATABASES and MICROFILMS are an ESSENTIAL ELEMENT to WRITING ABOUT FAMILY

RECENTLY through a newspaper database that carries hundreds of small town newspapers I was able to break through some research blocks that had truly confounded me. Yes, I'm always working a little bit on my own research when I'm not researching for someone else.

A member of my grandfathers extended family was on the census but the married surname was truly one of the most confused I had ever encountered. It looked like it had been scratched out, erased, and written over again.

I had tried all my tricks to bust through to the correct spelling of this surname. Soundex for starters. Then a series of probable misspellings due to the bad handwriting maybe being transcribed by a hurried typist incorrectly - a's turned into o's and so on.

I actually found an engagement announcementusing a misspelling and then a picture of the bride on a newly acquired newspaper database. I REMINDED MYSELF THAT EACH AND EVERY LETTER OF THE NEWSPAPER HAD BEEN TYPESET and that MAYBE WHEN THE TYPESETTER RAN OUT OF ONE VOWEL OR ANOTHER they decided to substitute!

Not only that but the first name of the groom was listed as Lester, when it was actually Louis.

But now, invigorated by actually having a first picture of this ancestor, an informed intuition took over and I took one more guess at the surname, and was able to find a World War I draft record that most likely was the correct spelling in another databse! I CROSSCHECKED THE ADDRESS and it was right.

SMALL TOWN NEWSPAPERS are valuable because often just reading the page gives us a great idea about the events of the day and what was important to the people in that town. This one appears to be something of a local NATIONAL ENQUIRER! For only two years later - coming up with another misspelling - came the report that the bride was being sued for desertion of her husband! Perhaps this is why I found her living again with her parents on the very next census.

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