Mushrooms!
Mushrooms is the only way I can think of describing the experience of the past week. Look away, there's nothing. Come back and suddenly you have a farm. I'm talking about my quest to find out the fate of my USA relatives.
I deliberately picked this branch of research to write about, apart from thinking migration is always interesting, I thought it would be a slow process. As much as I wanted to document it, here was an anticipated technique for dealing with frustration. I was of the view this one was ultimately going to be a brick wall - researching EVANS in Welsh communties in the States (where immigration records just state Wales, and no further specifics) - would be a walk down Avenue Disgruntlement.
Last week on a genealogy list, there was a thread devoted to people's frustrations. Someone, after detailing a long wild goose chase, ended their e mail with:
Wonder what I will find in the [newly released] UK 1911 census to cause me a headache.
I howled laughing, you won't get it unless you've been there. Dead people can have you running around, and up wrong streets. Back down them. On another paper trail. Crawling up walls and totally off track. And for years. In some case decades. Or perhaps the rest of your life. Unecessary trips and spendng a bloody fortune. You can curse them all you like, it won't ever get you anywhere; being dead is the ultimate revenge or joker card you can play on humanity! They might be six feet under, but sure do teach you patience and tolerance, whatever crap they present at you. Sometimes you want to bang their heads together, tell them to get a grip (their attempted ploys to hide illegitimacy being right up there) and sometimes they make you laugh or even cry. But nine times out of ten, you walk away with a sense of respect.
As a point of modern learning, they just teach you: be true to yourself. The identity stigmas of today, will a few decades from now will be no more, and someone perhaps will observe how you stood up against a status quo or not. The perfect case being children born out of wedlock, today no-one bats an eyelid. Turn the clock back even fifty years, and society pushed all sorts of irrational behaviour.
Back to those discoveries last week. A recently discovered double cousin (more about that some other time) asked me if I had an account on Ancestry because he wanted to share his research. I used to have an Ancestry account for four years, but I didn't bother to renew it last autumn because I was done with UK census research (I had moved onto documents only found in the library). However, Ancestry currently has a half price subscripton sale on (plus I could get another 25% cashback) and my cousin gave me that final push to take it up. I decided to purchase a world subscription (the most expensive), because I wanted to root around the US census returns.
Although I previously had an Ancestry account, I had never put my own data on there. The site's terms and conditions state anything you upload, they then own. A stance I disagree with, an American site should not own data about my family: it always belongs to me (the data portability argument). Sure I frequently use Creative Commons and see the benefits of collaboration or building knowledge via derivative works; but that's out of choice. Its not imposed on me by a commercial company.
As I wanted to exchange data with my cousin, I built my tree keeping information to a minimum and certainly not inputting data for anyone alive. It turns out, Ancestry has done much work on its algorithm and now throws matches; presumably assisted by which historical documents you link up to.
In one day I managed to find five relatives who were alive, all from my dad's family. Nothing for a long while, then suddenly London buses come to mind. If you've lived in London, you'll know what I'm talking about. Two Bryans, living in the UK; and three USA relatives from my dad's mother's line. To date I've had one reply from the UK and one from the States. The person who replied to me from the States, lives in California and her parents in Wyoming. (For the untravelled, here's a US state map).
I already knew I had about twenty living relatives in the States (my sister lives there, plus my dad's brother and his family); the US has featured in my life since birth. Suddenly, I have hundreds of American relatives. That's like hundreds of oversized cars and accent to boot, polluting the planet; in the name of living the American dream of the bigger the better. I swear, this has to be a script for a Black Comedy, and the universe is is howling right now. Knowing my bloody luck, next I'll find out I'm related to George W Bush (his mother has Welsh lineage). If that happens I'm totally shooting myself.
The three researchers (and cousins) I discovered in the States, had obviously been researching up a line which is much easier to do (I was going down). They'd linked their ancestor to "Blaencorrog [Blaencarrog], Wales" which is how I made the connection, plus the names of John and Jane. They had obviously drawn a blank at Blaencarrog - hell, its the name of a farm - and from what I can gather they were going by place name. Furthermore, they were calling it "Blaencorrog" which is understandable given American accents.
In my first post on this subject, I said I already knew John and Mary migrated to the States with one child, Elizabeth. From the US 1870 census, I had one suspect family living in Oak Hill, OH but I was quick to say:
Right family? His age is a bit out. There's more children listed, than Elizabeth (and she's not the first born), so how does this tie in with the book mention? So many questions, and no answers!
My suspect 1870 census, was the right one - yay! My confusion over Elizabeth, how come she was listed as an immigrant (in the book) yet was not the first born as per census? It was down to the first Elizabeth dying. The Elizabeth listed on the census was Elizabeth mark II, it was not unusual for the name of a child who had died to be passed onto a later born sibling. I kicked myself for not thinking about this possibility. John and Jane had twelve children:
Elizabeth EVANS, 1850
Mary Jane EVANS, 1851
John Albert EVANS, 1853
Elizabeth EVANS, 1853
David EVANS, 1855
Llewellyn EVANS, 1858
Richard L. EVANS, 1859
Deborah EVANS, 1862
Newton EVANS, 1864
Margaret EVANS, 1866
Charles EVANS, 1868
David C.. EVANS, 1869
From the birth places of their children, we know that the family lived in Pittsburg, PA until at least 1855 (where the first David was born). By the time Llewellyn made an appearance in 1858, the family were living in Oak Hill, which is a famous Welsh-American settlement (it also houses a Welsh American Museum). The family then moved to Columbus, Ohio; home to Ohio School for the Deaf (where Deborah was teaching in 1910). The family moved to Columbus, OH between 1880 and 1900; a date I am unable to at this stage narrow down further.
Through this research, I found out the 1890 US exists in fragments only:
1890 Federal Census of the United States, which was destroyed by a fire at the Commerce Department in Washington, DC on 10 January 1921.
So no relatives to be found in 1890, leaving me with a gap. For a UK parallel, the 1931 census was destroyed by fire during WW2, and for obvious reasons no census was taken in 1941. Parts of the 1861 census for the UK has gone awol, which means I'm several relatives including direct ancestors missing.
The US census is interesting, it collects very different data than the UK census; with emphasis on racial origin. The no such thing for the UK even though e.g. Cardiff saw much immigration due to the docks and export of coal, and London has a rich immigration history. Granted, for the States the country was built on migration in relatively modern times and perhaps vital for those wishing to research their roots back, but it goes beyond this towards skin colour defining one's status. The other striking difference is language, anyone who has viewed the Wales census, the question is simply which language is spoken in the home (stigma around the use of the Welsh language lies elsewhere). For the US, the questions (depending on year) are around ability to read, write, speak English; which lends to an underlying policy suggesting a push towards cohesion via common language use.
As for my relatives, John worked as a carpenter, owning his own property and by retirement he was supporting himself (and his wife). From other people's research, I now know John and Jane died in Columbus, Ohio in 1913 and 1920 respectively, ages 86 and 93. This now gives me a death date to look through the Welsh-American newspaper (before I was four decades out, imagine having to scan that much Welsh).
So what of the fate of John and Jane's children? More to follow ....