1950 Kansas Census

Are you eagerly awaiting the release of the 1950 census? If you follow Randy Seaver's Genea-Musings blog, then you may have seen his challenge to identify members of our ancestral families that will be in the 1950 United States census.

Although it will be interesting to see the household configurations in the 1950 census, there is census data available for that time period -- IF the person lived in Kansas. Yes, that's correct, one can find census data for Kansas thru 1961. This information can be found in Ancestry's collection: Kansas, City and County Census Records, 1919-1961.

Since all of my ancestral lines were in Kansas prior to 1919, this collection has proven to be very helpful.

For example, my great-grandmother, Josie Crawford was living in Dodge City in 1950. Thus, I did a search of the collection for a Josie Crawford living in Ford County, Kansas.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1)  Ellen Thompson-Jennings posted 20 questions on her blog this week - see Even More Questions About Your Ancestors and Maybe A Few About You (posted 27 June). 

2) We will do do these five at a time - Questions 1 to 5 tonight.

3)  Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook post.

Question 1: Which ancestor had the most children?

This was NOT an easy question to answer. I found a report in RootsMagic that told me the average children per family and maximum children per family.

However, I couldn't locate a report that would list the various families and the number of children. 

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

For this week's mission (should you decide to accept it), answer the question:

1)  It's story time - tell us how you met your spouse or significant other.  If you don't have one, tell us about how your parents met each other.

It's the spring of 1971 and I'm a freshman at Kansas State Teachers College in Emporia. I've just started my new job as an assistant in the chemistry department. I worked two afternoons a week - Tuesdays and Thursday - in the storeroom. It was my job to check out and then check in glassware, thermometers and other supplies to the chemistry students. Most of my 'customers' were in Chemistry I or II students. Since dress codes for my sorority were still enforce, I was not only one of the few females working in the department, but I was the only one in a skirt. 

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

For this week's mission (should you decide to accept it), answer the question:

1)  Have you done a good job of citing your sources in your genealogy management program or online family tree?  How are you doing?  How many source citations do you have, and how many people are in your tree?  What is the sources to persons ratio?

2)  Which master source (e.g., 1900 U.S. census, Find A Grave, specific book, etc.) do you have the most citations for?  How many?  How did you figure this out?

3)  Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a post on Facebook.

Randy Seaver provides another interesting challenge thru his 'Saturday Night Genealogy Fun' to look at my genealogy data in a different way.

Since I use RootsMagic, I thought I'd show how I'm getting the answers to these questions as well as answer them.

Occupations

For this week's mission (should you decide to accept it), answer the question:

1)  What were the occupations of your ancestors?

2)  Please go back several generations (say parents or grandparents or great-grandparents) and list the occupations that they had in the records you've found for them.  You could do this, say, by ancestor table number.

1. Me

• Teacher
• Librarian
• Technology Coordinator

2. my dad

• Teacher

3. my mother

• Medical Secretary

4. Leon Russel Crawford

• worked for Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad in Dodge City, Kansas

5. Winnie Letha Currey Crawford

• Clerk for Eckle's Department Store in Dodge City, Kansas

Celebrating 50 Years

Do you enjoy some of the online genealogy prompts to look at your data from a different viewpoint?

I know I do. Two of my currents sources for blogging prompts are Amy Johnson Crowe's #52ancestors and Randy Seaver's #SaturdayNightGenealogyFun.

As I was working on a blog post about love, I found I have several of my ancestors who celebrated 50 years of marriage. Thus, I thought it would be fun to suggest a 'Saturday Night Genealogy Fun' challenge:

1) How many of your ancestors were married for FIFTY years?
2) What is the longest marriage in your tree?

I'm approaching my 45th wedding anniversary and my parents were married for over fifty years.

Grandparents:

• Leon Crawford and Winnie Currey -- married Dec 1919; They were married 56 years before Leon passed away in Oct. 1976.
• Edward Osmond Briles and Pauline Mentzer were married Oct 1915. They were married 40 years when Edward passed away. Pauline never remarried.

Two Degrees

 

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music):

1)  Using your ancestral lines, how far back in time can you go with two degrees of separation?  That means "you knew an ancestor, who knew another ancestor."  When was that second ancestor born?

My first thought was that I knew my great-grandmother, Josie Crawford.

Christmas 1953: Marcia, Winnie, Josie

Photo Lineage

This week's #SaturdayNightGenealogyFun Challenge involves family photos.

How many generations do you have photographs or portraits of your ancestors and descendants? It can be any line...it just can't be broken!

When thinking about this, I realized that I have several generations of photos on my Crawford line.

Nelson G. Crawford (1808-1864)

150 Years Ago

This weeks 'Saturday Night Genealogy Fun' challenge is to determine which ancestors were living 150 years ago (Jan 1869).

In order to figure this out, I had to look at the data I had for each likely ancestor. Working from the pedigree view in Roots Magic, I clicked on each potential ancestor to open their data.

Time for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

Saturday Night 

Time for more Genealogy Fun! 

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to:

1)  What was your best research achievement in 2018?  Tell us - show us a document, or tell us a story, or display a photograph.  Brag a bit!  You've earned it!

2)  We all have elusive ancestors.  What research problem do you want to work on in 2019?  Tell us where you want to research and what you hope to find.


Well, it is actually Sunday afternoon, but I thought I'd accept the challenge.

I think my best research achievement for 2018 would be finding evidence to support a story my grandmother Briles told me about her grandfather. According to my grandmother, her grandfather got involved in a creamery and 'lost his shirt'.  I wrote about finding newspaper articles about a court case referred to as the creamery mess  involving George Mentzer in my previous blog, Creamery Mess.

Upon further research, I found quite a few newspaper articles about the Yates Center Creamery. I also found two court transcripts related to the case. Those newspapers articles and the court transcripts were transcribed in my blog post, Creamery Mess Part 2.

Pets

I recently watched a video that included a Golden Retriever puppy going down a slide. This brought back memories of our family dog, Peppy. Peppy joined the family while we were living on P street in Lincoln, Nebraska. When Peppy was a puppy, we would take him to Woods Park for him to go down a short children's slide. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of Peppy going down the slide.