When Trees Converge

Henry II, King of England

Open disclaimer: This information is based on accepted lineage for royal lines in England. I am not claiming that these lines are 100% accurate but, as most amateur genealogists, I am working under the assumption that they are, until I prove that they are not. I am not trying to claim royal heritage, I am just trying to trace my family lines.

I have already disproven what I thought I knew about my family tree a few times. It happens. Think about your lineage like ebbing and flowing tides. What the waves bring in one day help you piece the puzzle together. But what they bring in the next day may completely alter the picture you had developed. You have to be willing to be flexible to do this work, which I am.

I subscribe to the same theory that a lot of people in the world do. If you go back along all of our family trees far enough, we are all related, somehow and in some way. I have been lucky enough to find common ancestors among my friend group, which is thrilling in itself. Friends become cousins and remind you that every man, woman and child walking the street is, somewhere in the tree, a cousin. It’s the way genealogy humbles me. This is not just a quest to find the rivers that end in the pool of me. It’s the quest to uncover the pattern of flow between the humans of the world. We are deeply interwoven.

Imagine my surprise and delight when my family research led me to stumble upon a discovery I assumed could happen but never expected to find. I have 1,289 names on my family tree. There are 869 that belong to my father’s line and 420 to my mother’s line. And one of those names duplicates between the two of them.

My mother and father share a common ancestor in Henry II, King of England (1133-1189). In my paternal line, Henry II is my 26 times Great-Grandfather. That’s a lot of generations between us. He had a bastard son with his mistress Ida de Tosny, William Longespee, who was later legitimized as the 3^rd Earl of Salisbury. My father is descended from this son. In my maternal line, Henry II is my 27 times Great-Grandfather. My mother is descended from the marriage of Henry II and Eleanor of Acquitaine, his legitimate Queen. Their son John, King of England and father of Henry III is my ancestor.

From there, the lines diverge and follow very different paths, crossing oceans to a New World, to find each other again in a small town along the Erie Canal. And even from Henry II backwards, their lineage is different. My father’s line is full of Norman conquerors and Viking explorers of the North. My mother’s people travel south into indigenous France and Italy. But Henry II is the meeting place of two lines, a crossroads where blood meets blood, separating into separate bodies of water to cross and meet again in me, seven hundred and eighty-seven years later.

What the Census Knows, 1900-1940

The information on the census reports for 1900 to 1940 can give you information to better flesh out the lives of your most recent dead. This is a breakdown of each census report, and what the columns tell you, left to right. It’s an interesting read on its own, without ancestral context, simply to see what questions were thought to gather important information as the country developed.

The 1940 Census was released last year. Within months, volunteers had all of the information transcribed onto the internet so that people could search the census files by ancestor name; in the beginning it could only be searched by address. I spent weeks reading every census report for my hometown, looking for the names of my relatives, searching their last known addresses. It was how I discovered that my Great-Grandparents Riddle had left Lockport. Both of their previously known addresses were properties being rented to other families.

When I inquired with my family about where they might have been, I was told that they had owned a general store in Franklinville, NY for a while, while my Poppa commuted back and forth from the Harrison Radiator Factory in Lockport. And that they had a small farm in Somerset, NY just before that. The family story goes that they were having financial difficulties due to a delinquent son (who later went to prison for bank robbery in San Luis Obispo, California), which forced them to move. I found them on their farm in Somerset.

When I discovered their 1940 census from Somerset, I was suddenly reminded of a conversation my Grandpa and I had one night. His job had brought him down to the SUNY school where I attended college and we went out to dinner, which would have been when he lived in Franklinville. I was talking about high school as if he had attended the same one I did in his youth and he told me how he had gone to high school in another town, because they had moved for a while. That evening of conversation came flooding back to me, the snippets of his life he had shared. Knowledge is wonderful, and the census information is amazing; slivers of time like samplings of the past. But the memories that surface in the hunt for the past are the true treasured gifts for the living.

1900:

·         name of street; house number

·         dwelling houses numbered in order of visitation; families numbered in order of visitation

·         name of each person whose place of abode was the family

·         relationship of each person to the head of the family

·         color (white, black, mulatto, Chinese, or Indian)

·         sex

·         date of birth with month and year; age at last birthday

·         whether single, married, widowed or divorced; number of years married

·         number of children born to mother; number of children still living

·         place of birth; place of father’s birth; place of mother’s birth

·         year of immigration to the US; number of years in the US; date of naturalization

·         profession, occupation or trade of each person, male or female over 10 years; number of months person has been unemployed

·         whether attended school within the census year

·         whether can read; whether can write; whether can speak English

·         home owned or rented; whether owned free of mortgage

·         living farm or house; number of farm schedule

1910:

·         name of street; house number

·         dwelling houses numbered in order of visitation; families numbered in order of visitation

·         name of each person whose place of abode was the family

·         relationship of each person to the head of the family

·         sex

·         color or race

·         age at last birthday

·         whether single, married, widowed or divorced; number of years or present marriage

·         number of children born to mother; number of children still living

·         place of birth; place of father’s birth; place of mother’s birth

·         year of immigration to the US; whether naturalized or alien

·         trade or profession of each person; general nature of industry or business; whether an employer, employee, or working on own account; whether worked April 15, 1910; number of weeks unemployed

·         able to read; able to write

·         attended school anytime after September 1909

·         owned or rented home; owned free of mortgage

·         farm or house; number of farm schedule

·         whether a survivor of the union or confederate army or navy

·         whether blind; whether deaf and dumb

1920:

·         name of street; house number

·         dwelling houses numbered in order of visitation; families numbered in order of visitation

·         name of each person whose place of abode was the family

·         relationship of each person to the head of the family

·         owned or rented home; owned free of mortgage

·         sex

·         color or race

·         age at last birthday

·         whether single, married, widowed or divorced

·         year of immigration to the US; whether naturalized or alien; year of naturalization

·         attended school

·         able to read; able to write

·         place of birth; mother tongue; place of father’s birth; father’s mother tongue; place of mother’s birth; mother’s mother tongue

·         whether able to speak English

·         trade or profession of each person; general nature of industry or business; whether an employer, employee, or working on own account

·         number of farm schedule

1930:

·         name of street; house number

·         dwelling houses numbered in order of visitation; families numbered in order of visitation

·         name of each person whose place of abode was the family

·         relationship of each person to the head of the family

·         owned or rented home; value of home owned or cost of monthly rent

·         whether or not the family owned a radio set

·         does this family live on a farm

·         sex

·         color or race

·         age at last birthday

·         marital condition; age at first marriage

·         attended school; able to read and write

·         place of birth; place of father’s birth; place of mother’s birth

·         language spoken before coming to the US

·         year of immigration to the US; year of naturalization

·         whether able to speak English

·         trade or profession of each person; general nature of industry or business; class of worker; whether actually at work on regular working days; if not, number of unemployment schedule

·         whether a veteran of US military; what war

·         number of farm schedule

1940:

·         name of street; house number

·         number of household in order of visitation

·         home owned or rented; value of home or monthly rent

·         does this household live on a farm

·         name of each person whose place of abode was the family

·         relationship of each person to the head of the family

·         sex

·         color or race

·         age at last birthday

·         marital condition

·         attended school or college; highest grade of school completed

·         place of birth; citizenship of those foreign born

·         in what place did the person live April 1, 1935

·         whether at work in private or non-emergency government work March 24-30; whether at work or assigned to public emergency work the week of March 24-30; if not, whether they were seeking work; if not, whether they had some other job; number of  hours worked in week of March 24-30; duration of unemployment

·         occupation and trade; industry of employment; class of worker; number of weeks worked in 1939

·         wage and salary income received from the last year; did person receive income from sources other than wages

·         number of farm schedule

The census reports for 1940 were released in 1912 and it will be another 10 years before the 1950 census is released, in 2022. In order to protect the privacy of the people listed, they are only released to the public after 72 years.

What the Census Knows, 1850-1890

Albert & Rosella (LaValley) Durant, my 3x Great-Grandparents.

The information on the census reports for 1850 to 1890 can give you information to better flesh out the lives of your ancestors. After trolling through them for months, the information will become more clear, but even still, not all the handwriting is legible enough to discern what questions are being answered. This week I will be sharing a breakdown of each census report, and what the columns tell you, left to right. There may be some slight variations.

The US Census is an interesting read on its own, without ancestral context, simply to see what questions were thought to gather important information as the country grew and developed. On the personal side, these set of reports include job information and locations of birth, as well as clues to infirmities and education levels.

1850& 1860:

·         dwelling houses numbered in the order of visitation; families numbered in the order of visitation

·         the name of every person whose usual place of abode was within the family

·         age

·         sex

·         color (white, black or mulatto)

·         profession occupation or trade of males over 15

·         value of real estate owned; value of personal estate owned (1860 only)

·         place of birth

·         whether married within the year

·         whether attended school within the year

·         persons over 20 years who cannot read or write

·         whether deaf, dumb, blind, insane, idiotic, pauper or convict

1870:

·         dwelling houses numbered in the order of visitation; families numbered in the order of visitation

·         the name of every person whose usual place of abode was within the family

·         age at last birthday

·         sex

·         color (white, black, mulatto, Chinese, or Indian)

·         profession occupation or trade of each person, male or female

·         value of real estate owned; value of personal estate owned

·         place of birth; whether father and mother were of foreign birth

·         if born within the year, list month

·         if married within the year, list month

·         whether attended school within the year

·         whether cannot read; whether cannot write

·         whether deaf and dumb, blind, insane, or idiotic

·         male citizens of the US over 21 years

·         male citizens older than 21 whose right to vote is denied or abridged on grounds other than religion or other crime

1880: (the first time women were allowed to be enumerators)

·         name of street; house number

·         dwelling houses numbered in order of visitation; families numbered in order of visitation

·         name of each person whose place of abode was with the family

·         color (white, black, mulatto, Chinese, or Indian)

·         sex

·         age at last birthday; if born within the census year, list month

·         relationship of each person to the head of the family

·         whether single; whether married; whether widowed or divorced

·         profession, occupation or trade of each person, male or female; number of months person has been unemployed; whether person is sick or temporarily disabled and unable to work, list sickness

·         whether blind; deaf or dumb; idiotic; insane; maimed, crippled, or bedridden

·         whether attended school within the census year

·         whether cannot read; whether cannot write

·         place of birth; place of father’s birth; place of mother’s birth

1890: Only 6,160 census reports out of 62,979,766 survived a great fire at the Commerce Department in Washington, DC. It occurred January 10, 1921. For 1890 only, each family was enumerated on a separate sheet of paper. 

·         full Christian name with middle initial; surname

·         whether a soldier, sailor, or marine in the civil war, or a widow of one

·         relationship to head of family

·         race (white, black, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, Chinese, Japanese, Indian)

·         sex

·         age

·         whether single, married, divorced or widowed; whether married during the census year

·         mother of how many children and how many of these still living

·         place of birth; place of father’s birth; place of mother’s birth

·         number of years in the US; whether naturalized; whether naturalization papers have been taken out

·         profession, trade or occupation; number of months unemployed

·         attendance at school

·         able to read; able to write

·         able to speak English, or language spoken

·         whether suffering from acute or chronic disease, list disease

·         whether defective in mind, sight, hearing or speech, whether crippled, maimed or deformed

·         whether a prisoner, convict, homeless child or pauper

·         home rented or owned and if owned; whether free from mortgage or not

After I had accumulated enough Census reports, I noticed that I didn't have a single one from 1890 and went on the search to find out why. The only surviving fragments are from Alabama (1 county), District of Columbia (10 streets), Georgia (1 county), Illinois (1 county, 1 township), Minnesota (1 county, 1 township), New Jersey (1 county, 1 city), New York (2 counties, 2 towns), North Carolina (2 counties, 2 towns), Ohio (2 counties, 1 town), South Dakota (1 county, 1 town), and Texas (5 counties, 10 precincts).

Coming next week, What the Census Knows, 1900-1940. See last week’s post for the census reports from 1790-1840.

What the Census Knows, 1790-1840

B.H. Whitcher, retired shoemaker, and my 3x Great-Grandfather.

If you know what the United States Census reports are trying to tell you, you can glean information in your journey towards fleshing out a fuller picture of your ancestors. After trolling through them for months, the information will become more clear, but even still, not all the handwriting is legible enough to discern what questions are being answered. For the next few weeks I will be sharing a breakdown of each census report, and what the columns tell you, left to right.

The first census report was taken in 1790, fourteen years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, when only men were allowed to be enumerators. It lists a total US population of 3,929,214. It’s an interesting read on its own, without ancestral context, simply to see what questions were thought to gather important information as the country grew and developed.

1790:

·         name of head of family

·         free white males 16 years and older; under 16

·         free white females, including head of families

·         all other free persons

·         slaves

1800 & 1810:

·         number of family in order of visitation

·         name of head of family

·         number of free white males under 10 years; of 10 years and under 16; of 16 years and under 26; of 26 and under 45; over 45 years

·         number of free white females, under 10 years; of 10 years and under 16; of 16 years and under 26; of 26 and under 45; over 45 years

·         number of all other free persons

·         number of slaves

1820:

·         name of the head of family

·         number of free white males under 10 years; of 10 and under 16; of 16 and under 26; of 26 and under 45; over 45 years old

·         number of free white females under 10 years; of 10 and under 16; of 16 and under 26; of 26 and under 45; over 45 years old

·         number of foreigners not naturalized

·         number of persons engaged in agriculture; persons engaged in commerce; persons engaged in manufacture

·         number of male slaves under 14; of 14 and under 26; of 26 and under 45; of 45 and older

·         number of female slaves under 14; of 14 and under 26; of 26 and under 45; of 45 and older

·         number of free male colored persons under 14; of 14 and under 26; of 26 and under 45; of 45 and older

·         number of free female colored persons under 14; of 14 and under 26; of 26 and under 45; of 45 and older

·         all other persons except Indians not taxed

1830:

·         name of the head of family

·         number of free white males under 5 years; of 5 and under 10; of 10 and under 15; of 15 and under 20 years; of 20 and under 30; of 30 and under 40; of 40 and under 50; of 50 and under 60; of 60 and under 70; of 70 and under 80; of 80 and under 90; of 90 and under 100; 100 years and older

·         number of free white females under 5 years; of 5 and under 10; of 10 and under 15; of 15 and under 20 years; of 20 and under 30; of 30 and under 40; of 40 and under 50; of 50 and under 60; of 60 and under 70; of 70 and under 80; of 80 and under 90; of 90 and under 100; 100 years and older

·         number of male slaves under 10; of 10 and under 24; of 24 and under 36; of 36 and under 56; of 56 and under 100; of 100 years and older

·         number of female slaves under 10; of 10 and under 24; of 24 and under 36; of 36 and under 56; of 56 and under 100; of 100 years and older

·         number of free colored males under 10; of 10 and under 24; of 24 and under 36; of 36 and under 56; of 56 and under 100; of 100 years and older

·         number of free colored females under 10; of 10 and under 24; of 24 and under 36; of 36 and under 56; of 56 and under 100; of 100 years and older

·         number of deaf and dumb persons under 14; of 14 and under 24; of 25 and older; number of blind persons

·         number of foreigners not naturalized

1840, same as 1830, including:

·         number of insane and idiotic persons in public or private charge

·         number of persons employed in seven classes of occupation

·         number of persons in school; number of scholars

·         number of white persons over 20 who cannot read and write

·         number of pensioners for Revolutionary or military service

You can’t tell a whole lot of detail from the information in these early census reports, except for where your ancestors were located and how big their families were. However, when we were trying to locate the parents of my ancestor Cynthia Lusk, we used information from her brother George’s life to make clues as to where they lived. We found only one Lusk in the area, and the number of children he had, male and female, would fit the siblings we knew of for Cynthia and George, and other Lusks who lived in that town in the coming generation of heads of house. A possible lead is better than no lead at all, and we took it. We were lucky to discover later that our leap was correct.

Coming next week, What the Census Knows, 1850-1890.

Our Living Ancestor, the Earth

We live in a world we want to believe will never fall. We want to imagine that our society will grow and rise in prosperity and technology like every good science-fiction novel or film would have us see in our future. At best, we see a future like Gene Roddenberry created in his Star Trek universe, where no one wants for any of the basic needs. That is a beautiful world he created. Unfortunately, I see it more like E.M. Forster wrote in his 1909 short story, “The Machine Stops,” where everyone is living underground in automated bunkers, reliant upon their technology for everything, and the chaos that ensues when it dies. Just imagine what would happen if every internet browser crashed for one hour- chaos! We hide the true intention of these cautionary tales behind the moniker of science fiction. We live in a world we want to believe will never fall, but our own history tells us a different story.

Our planet’s surface is littered with the ruins of civilizations, big and small, that rose and fell into legend through acts of nature, lack of resources, and warfare; civilizations like the Sumerians, Minoans, Ancient Egyptians, Mayans, Phoenicians, Babylonians, Toltecs, Aztecs, Mauryans, Incans, and the Rapanui. Could any of them have foreseen their own eventual demise? I wonder this as prices for natural resources skyrocket and scientists stop debating the reality of global warming and start talking about the eventual end of the Midwest Aquifer. I’m not trying to be a downer but I try to look at the world with my eyes open. As we spill out into the future, it’s important that we remember the ones who will come after us. We have to be aware that we are not more important or entitled to life than any other man, than any other animal. We all share this world together. As a species with higher brain function, we cannot afford to be selfish creatures.

Western Civilization once referred to the African peoples living in tribal villages as savages and primitives, thinking of them as little more than animals, judging them on the way they lived. After all, who would choose to live that simply if they could evolve and become more civilized? It’s what those who traveled to the New World thought of the Native peoples. Except when I think of how long any of those indigenous populations existed in their way, on their lands, adapting their lives to the available resources and living gently, it gives me pause. My own city is littered with empty and decaying industrial buildings, giant monstrosities paved over the earth, over sacred land, for all that is green and brown and wild is sacred to me. There are days when I desperately despise concrete more than I am grateful for the ease of travel because of it.

How long did the Native people of America live softly upon the earth? And how quickly did colonists ravage it of resources? According to their own Edward Winslow, it only took one year for them to make a visible and landscape altering change. And my ancestors were among that group, and more among the ones to come soon after. We came here, from an industrious world, with industry in mind, not simple living.

Philosopher and writer Derrick Jensen lives on Tolowa land, a Native people who originated in what we know as northwestern California and southern Oregon. He says that before conquest, they lived there for 12,500 years, without materially damaging the land. He argues, for sustainability sake, that while they were able to take trees from the rainforest for their homes during the course of that time without damaging the environment, that is no reason to believe that any forest can survive industrial forestry, because that becomes, by its nature, deforestation. What damage have we already wrought seeking resources for profit rather than need? Jensen talks about the Summitville Mine in Colorado, two square miles of toxic land in the mountains, in his article “What We Leave Behind” written with Aric McBay in 2009. He says “the total value of gold and silver taken from this mine is less than half of what the cleanup has cost so far.”

That has to mean something now. Our resources are finite. They will have an end and we know that. We have to know that. Taking resources from elsewhere isn’t the answer. We are not schoolyard children. Just because someone else has something we want doesn’t mean we can take it. Jensen says, “Any solution that springs from the (most often entirely unconscious) belief that the culture is more important than the world (or that the culture is real and the real world exists only as a backdrop and a source of raw materials) will not solve the problem.” Living more simply and walking softly is the answer, but it’s not enough if just a few of us do it. As a culture, we have to move away from industry. Can we, or is it already too late? I mean, we can do it. But will we?

And still, we do what we can to live more simply, because it’s something we can and should learn to do. Years ago, we turned to seriously look at the waste our house was producing. We switched from putting out one large garbage bag a week, to one smaller bag every two to three weeks. It makes us feel better, but it’s still not enough. That my family is living simpler is not enough. It helps us maintain our empathy for all living beings but having empathy for dying breeds, starving and enslaved people, and toxic landscapes will not make a global difference. I can no longer fool myself that it’s enough that I feel for the world. We need to stop industrial progression that surpasses our ability to dispose of the waste it produces.

When I think about industry, I think about the landfills, and about how much our country manufactures that we hope people will buy. We make products that are not meant to last for more than a few years, specifically because it is more cost effective to make a cheaper product in a country with less stringent labor laws and environmental laws, all in the hopes that we will feel the need to buy another product when it must be replaced. Or that we will buy a better one. How can we be so selfish? How can we, as consumers, allow industry to decide how we should live and what we should buy, what we should want to buy?

My resolution for this new year is to look more deeply at our waste culture. How can we recycle more than we have without needing to create more industrial waste in order to do so? How can we step away from our dependency on plastic everything? Every time we travel on the road and I see plastic bags stuck up in the winter trees, I say that if I could have one wish, it would be that every piece of plastic stuck and tangled in nature would, poof, become grass seed. That every bottle cap and soda can ring snagged in the mouth or belly of a turtle or bird would, poof, disappear, so that no more animals die from our careless lack of disposal of our waste.

How can we move away from a disposable Dollar Store culture and salvage this world for our children and their descendants? I do not have children, but I consider all of yours my responsibility. I am not more important than any of them. My immediate gratifications and comforts are not more important than their future. This society of make more, buy more, spend more, is not a cooperative one, it’s a competitive one.

I think about our ancestors, and how they had hope for progress and growth and were unaware of the potential dangers that would appear down the line. In a world as vast as the new world they could not envision a depletion of its resources, but they were wrong. I want to leave a better world for those still to come. I don’t have any answers, but for this new year, I am choosing to see the world with my eyes wide open, with my heart wide open. I would rather know the truth rather than be sheltered from it.

The earth is not a backdrop we live upon, it is the life source we were birthed from. It is our first great ancestor, and it is still alive beneath us. We have the chance every day, with every breath, with every action, with every dollar, to show our gratitude for the life and sustenance it gives us. We have a living opportunity to honor it. Derrick Jensen asks his reader, when we talk about living in the real world, what do we mean? “...are you talking about wage slave capitalism, or are you talking about a living breathing world of trees and rivers and lakes and deserts and forests and mountains and seas?”

To end, I offer you a moment of inspiration to brighten this week's theme, because there is always hope. Click on the link and the watch the video listed on the page, a gift for you, of people making the most beautiful music out of garbage- enjoy!