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Thank you!
By Lisa L. Cooke
I love having
this additional method for us to chat about family history.
It’s great to have a way to share extra tidbits with you that come
along throughout the month that I didn’t have room for in the show.
July 1, 1867:
Canada Day
July 4, 1776:
Independence Day
July 6, 1946:
President George W. Bush was born
July 26, 1788:
New York joins the Union
Computer Gem...
Ever been confused about who is your second cousin twice removed?
Here are some websites to help you sort it out.
http://www.searchforancestors.com/utility/cousincalculator.html
http://stevemorse.org/relation/calculator.html
Genealogy Gems Podcast Extras...
"Our invention can be exploited for a certain time as a scientific
curiosity, but apart from that, it has no commercial future whatsoever."
- Auguste Lumière, early film maker who, with his brother Louis, organized
the first public performance of motion pictures in December 1895.
iGoogle Themes: You can select
from several fun themes to dress up your iGoogle page. Look in the upper
right portion of your iGoogle page for the link “Select Theme” (next to “Add
Stuff” where you can add more gadgets). Many of these themes are dynamic and
change throughout the day reflecting sunrise and sunset areas in your time.
Right now I have Seasonal Scape on my iGoogle page.
Yesterday the ladybug and frog were playing on a water slide and
today they are having a summer picnic.
Too much fun!!
Episode 17 – Canadian
Research
Here’s another website to move your Canadian Research forward:
http://www.virtualreferencelibrary.ca/
Under the “Subject Directory” click on “Genealogy”
Plug one end of the cable into your video ipod, and the other three plugs
into the corresponding yellow, white & red jacks on your TV.
Then…
You may need to change your television tuner to the appropriate channel to receive the signal. On my TV it was INPUT5.
QUESTION:
Hi Lisa,
I am really stumped on finding the answer to information found on a census
return. I have asked on mailing lists, but haven't received a logical
answer. I have a Sarah Ammerman b ca 1834, her father --William Ammerman,
born ca 1793 NY, mother--Elizabeth Trowel/Troxel, b: ca 1808 PA.
All of Sarah's available census records say she was born --Canada ca 1834,
with the word Eng, after the word Canada. In 1920 one of Sarah's daughters
say her mother was born, Canada--mother tongue, Dutch (with what looks like
the two letters--BL--inserted after the word Dutch. Does this tell you
anything? Does it mean that maybe they were Dutch, but of the Black race,
does it refer to a term I've heard, "Black Dutch"? I think that can refer to
any number of things. Do you have an explanation as to what this might mean?
Thank you for any help you might have.
Donna Cooper
ANSWER:
Dear Donna,
Your reference to “Black Dutch” reminded me of one of my favorite movies, “I
Remember Mama”, where the eccentric uncle is referred to as a “Black
Norwegian.” However, I can
assure you that the notation of “BL” by the census enumerator does not mean
“Black”.
In 1920 there was a definite emphasis placed on clarifying nativity (where a
person was born) and mother tongue (the
language of customary speech before coming to the U. S.)
Census enumerators received detailed instructions for taking the census.
You can take a look at these for yourself at
http://usa.ipums.org/usa/voliii/inst1920.shtml.
Just imagine after reading these voluminous directions how an
enumerator would be compelled to take his or her job very seriously indeed.
In a case like yours where I find something out of the ordinary handwritten
in the census, I use the same technique I would use if I had found a name I
couldn’t read. I would look at
other entries on the page for something that looks the same.
In this case there is no other hand written “BL” on the page.
But by going one page back, I quickly discovered that “Otto” our
enumerator not only used “BL” in the mother tongue column (which sometimes
looks like “OL”) but also “LC”.
A quick scan back and forward several pages showed that few entries had
these hand written abbreviations, but every single one was indeed associated
with a foreign language. I
began to feel pretty confident that at least the letter “L” stood for
language.
So, I went back and read the enumerator instructions yet again.
I looked slowly and carefully, especially at how they referred to
“language.” While some
abbreviations are indicated for use in the census instructions, these
abbreviations are not listed.
However, the following sentence stood out more prominently to me this time
around: “By
mother tongue is meant the language of customary speech before coming to the
United States.” Note the words:
LANGUAGE of CUSTOMARY.
Abbreviated this phrase would become “LC” – one of the puzzling abbreviation
pairs. You can see in the
census image below that “LC” was noted on the foreign languages entered.
In the case of the GONC family (above) on the page prior to your WATSON
family, Stephen and Mary Gonc were born in Hungary.
Their mother tongue is listed as Hungarian.
However if you look in the column to the left Stephen answers “yes”
to being able to read and write English.
Since the census instructions state that Mother Tongue is the
language spoken prior to arrival in the U.S., and Stephen spoke, read and
wrote English, Otto the enumerator may have felt compelled to further
clarify the language spoken with “LC”, indicating Hungarian as the language
of customary speech. Hungarian
was obviously spoken in the Gonc home.
So why did our dear “Otto the Enumerator” feel compelled to clarify the
WATSON household with “BL” in the mother tongue column?
Close inspection of the WATSON family shows that they too had some
unusual aspects to their language.
Although Joseph Watson was born in the U.S. and spoke English, like many, he could not read or write the language. His wife Belle (your Sarah Ammerman’s daughter) could read and write English. She was born in Indiana, as was her father, but her mother (Sarah) was born in Canada, and spoke “Dutch” with the extra notation of “BL”. Now, speaking Dutch when you’re born in Canada, and your husband is from Indiana seems a bit odd. And my guess is that conscientious Otto the Enumerator would want to be careful to clarify things. Remember, Otto was asking what Belle’s mother’s “language of customary speech” was. We can imagine as a Canadian married to an American whose children grew up learning English, Sarah likely spoke English. But “Dutch” was probably what Sarah spoke around the house. My guess would be that “BL” might have stood for “Bi-Lingual”, helping to clarify why a language appears that one might not expect.
I must throw in my hypothesis for Sarah speaking “Dutch”. You say that Sarah’s maiden name was Trowel or Troxel. I assume you have found several different spellings throughout your research. You also say that her mother was born in Pennsylvania and her father in New York. The birthplaces of her parents further substantiate that she must have spoken English. So why does Otto write down “Dutch” for Sarah? I submit that Sarah spoke “Pennsylvania Dutch”, which of course derives from German. And when you enter TROXEL into the familysearch.org search engine, you find many by that and similar surnames married or living in Pennsylvania having been born in Germany.
Of course we can’t be 100% certain, but by carefully examining not only the record at hand, but other records by the same census taker, as well as the instructions he was working by, combined with further exploration of the family’s heritage, I think have a pretty good theory to move forward with.
I invite newsletter subscribers to drop me an email if you have come across these census language abbreviations, and have evidence of their meanings. Email me at genealogygemspodcast@gmail.com.
Thanks for asking Donna. It was a fascinating
question.
Lisa
"There are only two lasting bequests we can give our children
one is roots; the other, wings."
--Anthony Brandt
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