I also looked up my mom's mom. Jackpot! Her family has been traced (thank you family member somwhere!) back to 1520 when a boy was born in the Netherlands, and his son immigrated to the U.S.
The U.S. Census reports that you can look up are from 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920 and 1930. You can actually review the actual report. I found out that my grandma Alleda went by "Leta" when she was little, because that is the name her parents gave the Census taker (who had great hand writing by the way). I also found out that one relative had 2 small children really close together, and had her 12 year old sister move in with her - presumably to help- because the 12 year old is written down as living with her sister in 1920 instead of living with her mom- who lived in the same town. The 1940 census won't be publicized until 2012. I know you were dying for that little tidbit of info.
One last bit of fascinating factoid for you- I looked up my Grandpa Dexter- who was in WWII as some kind of hospital worker- paramedic driver- the stories aren't totally clear. Pictured below is the paperwork showing he boarded USS Enetrprise on 4-21-1941 and was headed from San Diego to Pearl Harbor. He survived Pearl Harbor- but I can't imagine what that day must have been like for him working to save people.
After I had spent 2 days on this website- I told Morrie and my parents what I had found out. The next morning I asked Morrie how late he was watching tv because I never remembered him coming upstairs. He said he was "On that darn Ancestry.com" until the wee hours of the morning. I am telling you- super cool stuff out there. I even found pictures of family members from the early 1900's. Stuff my dad didn't even know existed, he was pretty excited.
2 comments:
That's cool! I'm not going though...don't have hours to spend on the internet. Or, do I?
I'm totally going to check it out. It's crazy, how reading about them seems like reading like people from a different world, not just a different century.
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