Bracketed!

No, this is not a belated post about March Madness. I found another set of twins, Christine and Ernesteen Howard, age three. Sometimes the census taker noted twins on the census, but this one used brackets to denote the relationship:

Also, look at all those kids!

(Anson County, NC, ED 4-23, Sheet 18-A)

Widowed young

Here's a sad one - Mildred Stewart, age 25, a widow with two kids. Notice she's living with her mother, also a widow.

If you do the math, she was around 17 when her daughter was born and 18 when her son was born and then widowed before 25. What a hard life...

(Anson County, NC, ED 4-23, Sheet 18-A)

Imagination or the lack thereof

Some people just had no imagination:

(Alamance Co, NC, ED 1-24, Sheet 13-B)

Adoption, anyone?

I had been wondering if the census-takers would ever make a distinction about adopted children (that's assuming the parents would offer up the information). Alamance County, NC, (ED 1-5, Sheet 20-B)

Where's Waldo?

In Boone Station, Alamance County, NC:

ED 1-5,Sheet 19-A

Double trouble

The Miller family of Alamance County, North Carolina caught my eye during indexing, because they had not one, but two sets of twins: Alene and Irene, age 19, and Haywood and Elwood, age 10.

Was it a rule that if you had twins in the 30s and 40s you had to give them rhyming or matching names? As a twin myself, I'm thankful that trend skipped my family!

I'll have more on the Millers a little later, as the sheer number of children intrigued me...

Update on the number 3 and race

Thanks to the fine folks over at the Family Search indexing forums, I now know about the penciled-in codes in the race column, alluded to in my earlier post about Indians:

• Mex = 1 (along with White)
• Col or C = 2 (along with Neg)
• In = 3
• Chi = 4
• Jp or Jap = 5
• Fil = 6
• Hin = 7
• Kor = 8

(from PROCEDURAL HISTORY OF THE 1940 CENSUS OF POPULATION AND HOUSING, page 132 of PDF, http://usa.ipums.org/usa/resources/v...umproc1940.pdf)

It was for the coders who took the census returns and punched them into tabulating machines. (These were originally built by Tabulating Machines Company, later know as International Business Machines, or IBM, although the Census Bureau started building their own around 1905-1907.) The numbers were to help them distinguish between the less common "races" so you only sometimes see a 2, and I've not yet seen a 1.

Indians and the number 3

Something that intrigues me about the census is the different codes they used: When someone was marked as married, for instance, but their spouse was not present, they crossed out the "M" and wrote a 7 above it. Digging through forum posts at Family Search informed me that that is what the 7 meant: separated from spouse, basically.

Here's one I haven't been able to figure out though. Native Americans (labeled as "Indians" in 1940) were always (at least in Oklahoma) marked with a "3" above the crossed-out "In."

From Washington Co, OK, ED 74-13, Sheet 6-A

This was a mixed-race marriage, notice. It was also unusual in that every other "Indian" family I've come across so far had all of the school-age children marked absent, apparently all away at "boarding schools" - part of the so-called "civilization or assimilation process."

Sherlock Holmes, anyone?

I've run across the child of a mystery buff! Conan Doyle Kerby, age 24 from Bartlesville, Washington Co, OK (ED 74-9, Sheet 8-B, Line 51). Based on his age he would have been born around 1916, shortly after the publication of The Valley of Fear, the last Sherlock Holmes novel (although short stories were published up through 1927). The Wikipedia article on Holmes gives dates... Another interesting tidbit about Conan Doyle Kerby is that he and his young wife, Marcella, age 22, appeared to have worked together in a department store. He was an Assistant Manager and she was a Saleslady...

I spoke too soon...

Two more twins, in one family no less! Louis and Louise, age 12, also in Wagoner Co, Oklahoma, listed as the grandchildren of Ed and Geneva McDonald. Also Ruth and Rubin age 3 listed as the great-grandchildren of the same couple. The children's last name is Deloren or Delosen, I think. (ED 42-17, Sheet 4-B, lines 46-49)

Twins, finally!

I've been indexing the 1940 census since the first day, and I've just run across my first set of twins in the census: Chester and Lester Stout, age 17, from Porter Twp, Wagoner, Oklahoma. (ED 73-14, sheet 5-A, lines 32-33.) The fun of indexing to me is turning the dry facts into little stories in my head... Actually that's the fun of genealogy in general.

At this point I've indexed over 900 names from this census, and the fact that this is the first set makes me wonder about the incidence of twins in that day and age. Granted I wouldn't be able to tell about older twins unless they were still living together into adulthood, but I thought there would be more. I thought I had found a pair a few days ago, but then realized that in fact those 16-year-olds were actually married to each other! (And still living with his parents, to boot.)