52 Ancestors Week 14: Check It Out

 From Amy Johnson Crow: The theme for Week 14 (and the monthly theme for April) is "Check It Out." We often use this phrase when we want someone to pay attention to something neat. ("Hey! Check it out!") It's also something you do with some library books. What does that inspire you to write about?

Tell me, Doctor. Where are we going this time?

    A  funny mechanical wheezing sound heralds your arrival and a blue 1950s style British police box materializes in the middle of downtown Haverhill, Massachusetts. You step out of the time machine and take a look around. It's Haverhill. But, it's not the Haverhill you remember. The year is 1950. Your ancestors are here somewhere and it's your job to find them! Are you up to the task? You bet I am!

1950, the year of the art-deco 
humans. Crazy, man. *snaps fingers*

    That was pretty much how I felt on April 1st, 2022 because that was when the 1950 census became available for everyone to check out. For seventy-two years, the contents of the census was safely guarded by National Archives and Records Administration aka NARA. When clock struck midnight on April 1st, the census became available on their website and millions of people around the Internet descended upon the archive. It's a miracle no one crashed the site! It really is!

    For me, this was a long time coming. Who could I find in the census? I already knew my parents, both sets of grandparents and more would be in the census thanks to finding them in various city directories and you know....talking to my parents helped a lot! I was pretty excited! I had the exact addresses for practically everyone I wanted to look for! All I needed was the ED number. The ED number is the number for the enumeration district the person you're looking for was residing in at the time. Thankfully, Ancestry.com and other sites supplied an easy to follow guide to finding that number.

   Basically, you type in an address on this site and Ancestry will provide you with its corresponding enumeration district number and you can search from there. Over on NARA's site, you can actually search by last name thanks to fancy new artificial intelligence-fueled name recognition software as well. Twenty-first century thinking used to solve mid-twentieth century problems. Oh, if only it was that simple. In the days since the release, I've found many people. Let's check out what I've found so far!

Lookin' spiffy!

     Naturally, the first people I looked for were my paternal grandparents, Marco and Olympia Ferraiolo. I typed in my last name into NARA's search engine and to my utter surprise it was spelled correctly in the census! I had a great  big laugh at that because in the 1930 and 1940 census my last name was spelled incorrectly. I sat back in my chair and thought for a minute. I bet my grandfather spelled out his last name for the enumerator. It's the only logical explanation! 

    Marco and Ollie weren't the only ones on that page, though! Joining them was my father who was barely two years old at that point. The three of them were living at 26 Bartlett Street in Haverhill with several people in the same building. My great-grandparents, Giuseppe and Clementina were living there. My great-aunt Louise, her husband and their two children were there as well. You could say it was a veritable gold mine of information. I was very much hyped after finding that discovery right out of the gate. Who wouldn't be?

    I also found that Marco was the person spotlighted on the bottom of the census for the sample line! That was pretty cool to me. I didn't find anything NEW. But, it was still cool! 

    That was all I found that first hour or so after the release. I went to bed roughly a half an hour after midnight as I was watching Amy Johnson Crow's launch party on her Youtube channel. We were having a great time making discoveries and talking. It was fun. But, it was late and I work better when I have a full night's sleep. A refreshed Chris is a productive Chris.

The pics this week are going with a theme.
1950s era!

    The next morning I was refreshed and ready to go. After breakfast I set out to see who else I could find. I thought I would see if I could find some people on my mother's side of the family. Typing in "Felker" on the NARA site was enough to net me a few results. The first one was Austin Felker and his wife, Henrietta.

    They were living where I expected them to be. 73 Margerie Street. Both were working in a shoe factory. In the same neighborhood, I was finding many of their kids and other relatives. The odd man out seemed to be Wilfred.

    Wilfred was living clear across town with his daughter-in-law on Water Street. This, sadly, would be the last census he would appear in as he was seventy-nine years old.

    The next person I looked up was Vincenzo. That was a little difficult. Apparently my luck with my last name being spelled correctly ran out because Vincenzo was in the census as "James Ferialo". The enumerator spelled his name phonetically. I shook my head a bit. Not to worry. All is not lost!

    On the NARA website, it gives the user an opportunity to correct the name and any mistakes you find on the census for free. I'm not sure if this will transfer to hints on Ancestry and elsewhere, but, it's something. When hints become available on Ancestry, I'll be sure to correct it there and over on Familysearch I plan on correcting it there as well--once Massachusetts becomes available for public scrutiny er...transcription.

    Vincenzo was living with his second wife, Fortuna Grasso on Shepherd Street. Oddly enough no profession was listed for him or his wife. He was in his fifties so he should have still been working as a laborer, right? Who knows? At least I found him and I will be making the corrections as soon as possible. 

  Further down the sheet I saw the Benedetti family, owners and operators of the famous Benedetti's deli! That was pretty cool and still not surprising. 

    I was pretty much done with the direct ancestors in Haverhill at that point so I decided to turn my sights on Newburyport. I had a few people to find there including my mother and her parents. Things there didn't quite go according to plan!

    I found Joseph Laplante and Georgianna Ross living next door to their daughter, Clara on Bromfield Street. At this point in time Clara was divorced from Alfred Hamel and I suppose she wanted to be near her parents for the time being. Shortly after the census was taken, she ended up moving to Lawrence.

    Where was Alfred, though? At first it was a bit of a challenge finding him. Was he living near his "Fix-it" shop? Nope. My mother told me he was probably living on nearby Plum Island. I was like "Okay. I need to find the enumeration district number for Plum Island". 

    The first few tries didn't work. How was Plum Island enumerated in the Census? Well, thanks to some friends of mine in the Genealogy Squad Facebook group, I was able to find the enumeration district. I had to search the main road that went    through the island.

    As I was going through the census, I noticed a few things. Most of the houses were vacant. This makes perfect sense because the houses on Plum Island are known for being vacation homes for people during the hot summer months. The census was conducted in the early spring and not many people were around.

I wish I had a 1950s era pic of him
to go with the theme.

    I also noticed that the enumerator had a bit of an adventure going through Plum Island. The enumerator reported high winds blowing the paper around and even sea gull attacks! This tracks. This tracks very well. The guy should be glad there weren't any greenhead flies buzzing around. The females are known for their sharp fangs. Wildlife on the river gets wild. It's a shame Steve Irwin never visited.

    After much digging through the vacant homes and sparsely populated island, I found Alfred living by himself. It was almost as if he was living in a sort of self-imposed exile far from his family in Newburyport. I knew this wasn't the case. But, it was just like "Wow. You  really wanted to get away from the world didn't ya?"

    At least he had a few neighbors around. It's important to note that there is probably a good reason why some homes are vacant. They could be vacation homes. So when you see something vacant, be sure to check out where the neighborhood is. Of course the person could just be not home....

    That's exactly what happened with my grandfather, grandmother and my mother. They should have been living at Tyng Street in Newburyport. They weren't home. They weren't with my great-grandfather on Plum Island. They weren't with my great-grandparents in Haverhill. They just weren't home. It's a weird and not all that uncommon phenomenon in the 1950 census.

    Normally when this happens a person is instructed to go to the back of the census to see if they could find the person they're looking for. Enumerators would go back and check if the person was home and record them. That would be the end of it, right?

    Well, in this case things went a little sideways. While it was indeed my grandfather's home in 1950, the people who answered the census questions were his sister, Norma and her husband Bernard Bograd.

    That vexed me a bit as you can imagine. Why would Norma leave out her brother and his family? That is just so weird. They were definitely living at Tyng street according to my mother's own birth certificate. I'm not sure what happened.

    My uncle thinks that perhaps my grandfather was on an air base during the census. It's hard to say. He did serve in the Korean War. But, that wasn't until after the census was conducted. Where was he?! My mom joked and said that she was in the space between spaces. I kind of believe her. =D

    All isn't completely lost. Someone out there might be able to find them and they could turn up as a hint on Ancestry or somewhere else. When that happens (And you know it will), I plan on dancing in the street. They're out there. They have to be! I know there's a possibility that they were missed. But, it's extremely unlikely. Time will tell and I won't give up. I will find them!!

    So, that's all I've checked out so far in the 1950 census. I'm sure there are other goodies I can find in Newburyport and Haverhill. I've found a few Coppola families. I've found several other people as well. All it takes is a little detective work. It's also a good idea to work with a group on this because sometimes I need a second pair of eyes on a few things. With that in mind, who have you checked out in the census? Have you made any discoveries? What stories do you have?

The possibilities are endless. We have a new census to explore everyone. Let's go check it out!

See ya next time!

P.S. This blog is part of Elizabeth O'Neal's genealogy blog party! See the details here: https://www.thefamilyheart.com/genealogy-blog-party-1950s/