1940 Census

Well, the 1940 Census has been released, but it's not that easy to access it.  Ancestry.com is organizing  the entire census by names, but it's a tedious process and only Delaware and Nevada have been finished.  So, in order to find the right family, you have to know the "enumeration district."  Ancestry has a tool that helps you find the enumeration district, but first you have to know the address of the family you're looking for, as well as the cross streets.  That means you have to access Google earth or Google maps or some other source to try to find the right enumeration district. 

I only had one family I was looking for in 1940 for which I knew not only the address but also the enumeration district, and that was my mother's family.  She lived on Marion Avenue in Lima, Ohio, and I thought the cross street was Baxter.  So I punched in the street names and got he enumeration district.  Then I had the daunting task of possibly having to look through 24 pages.  Fortunately, I found the right family on page 6.  There they were: my grandmother Bernadine (my grandfather was deceased); my aunts Marcella and Mary Catherine; my uncles Alfred and Charles; and my mother Frances.

I can't tell you what it felt like to see this: the family I remember from my childhood, all together in one place, frozen in time.  My mother was only 13 years old, just two years older than my grandson Sean is today.  And though the family had been without their father for 10 years, it was likely a happy time.  WW II had not started and they were all together.  No one was married yet.  My aunt Marcie, at age 26 was helping to support the family.  My uncle Al would enter the service soon and then marry.  My uncle Charlie was 21 years old.  He would die of complications from diabetes 15 years later.  My aunt Kay (whom I called "Dede") was 15.  She would eventually marry and raise 6 sons.  And my mother would marry my father two weeks before he left for Japan during WW II.  Fortunately, the war ended while he was en route, so he didn't see combat, but they were separated for a year while he was in the army of occupation.

Now I want to find my dad's family in Lima, Ohio.  I already tried to look up his family by their street, which I think at that time was O'Connor.  But the ancestry tool doesn't include that street, so I'm wondering if the street was renamed at some time.  I'm going to have to do some digging. But that's what genealogy is all about.  

Pilgrims, Pioneers, and Cowboys

In the midst of all the interviews for my husband's father's family history book, I finished the book for his mother's side of the family.  I gave it the title Pilgrims, Pioneers, and Cowboys.

My husband's maternal grandfather Frank Ruby  (shown above with his horse, Frosty) was a rancher, or as his grandchildren preferred to think of him, a cowboy. He came from a long line of farmers and ranchers, dating back to the 1600s in Switzerland, where his ancestors were also ranchers.  In the early 1700s, the first Ruby ancestor came to America and settled in Pennsylvania.  A few decades later, the family migrated to Kentucky, early pioneers setting out  to find good farmland. Other ancestors settled in Ohio and Nebraska, and eventually Wyoming, where Frank  had his ranch.

Frank's mother, on the other hand, is a descendant of Mayflower passengers Francis Cooke, Stephen Hopkins and Elizabeth Fisher Hopkins.  These ancestors settled in Massachusetts, but eventually migrated to North Carolina and Ohio. 

The book contains many stories, pictures, maps and charts, and I hope the family enjoys getting to know the details that, prior to my genealogy research, they never knew about this very interesting family to which they belong. 

A Day with the Cousins

In order to finish the Croatian family history project, my husband and I needed more information on some branches of the family we know little about.  Specifically, the branches associated with his grandmother, whose surname was "Yeseta." So we were invited to the monthly "Senior Luncheon"  at St. Anthony's Croatian Church in Los Angeles, a church that recently celebrated its 100 year anniversary. Here we would meet some of my husband's second cousins for the first time.

Before we went to the luncheon, though, we drove by two houses. This one is where my husband lived as a baby:

This one is where his grandparents lived - and where they made their wine in a backyard shed.

The luncheon was a lesson in Croatian culture and a wonderful introduction to family members we've never met.  I was able to fill in many blank spaces on the family tree, meet two other family members doing genalogical research, and enjoy a delicious meal of salmon, rice and asparagus (along with 2 glasses of wine) for only $10. The family had 2 full tables of cousins. 

After the luncheon, Tony and I were introduced to the other attendees, who were well acquainted with the Yeseta family, but not with us, of course.  I was introduced as a "gerontologist" rather than a "genealogist." The conversation was non-stop and exhausting, but exhilerating at the same time.  I came away with a wonderful sense of acceptance and warmth from this family, many phone numbers for follow-up conservations, and promises to meet again.