Patience Finally Pays Off

I found out this afternoon that the state of Colorado 1940 census and a few other states have been completely indexed on Family Search  for free.  So I entered my uncle's name - Jack A Carson expecting a hit.  Sixteen possible hits were displayed.  Not one of them was the Jack A Carson that I was wanting to find.  However there was a John Tex Carson with the correct wife's name and the correct children's name on the report.  Could this be my uncle?   Well.......maybe.... 

Questions...  Why did my uncle change his name in the first place?   Why is the name on the marriage application different from the name on the census?  My search for answers continues.

Other 1940 Census Surprises

When you do not know the street address where your relatives were living in 1940 you will have to wait until the 1940 census is fully indexed to locate them.  However sometimes you get lucky.  My cousin Joanne decided to check a small community close to where our family was living in 1930.  On page 19 of 33 ED # 101-49 Harris County Texas of the 1940 census she found my uncle Leroy A Hugonin 34, single, a chicken farmer, and my father Arthur Elsworth Hugonin (Leroy A Hugonin's youngest brother) 18, a farmers helper, living in the same household.   And on page 22 of 33 ED # 101-49 was my grandfather Lewis Alexander Hugonin (62) head of household,  grandmother Bessie Bell Myers Hugonin (60), and Bessie Mae Hugonin (16) their daughter.    

Patience.......Patience........Patience

Patience is not one of my virtues.   So waiting for the Colorado searchable indexes to be completed has been torture.   My daddy's brother Allen Hugonin A.K.A. Jack Allen Carson lived in Colorado in 1936.  I have a copy of his Marriage Record Report dated February 1, 1936 from the State of Colorado.  I also believe that Jack and his wife E. Mae Braddy(Brady) had twin girls born December 24, 1938 in Denver, Colorado.   Here I sit. waiting....waiting....hoping.....hoping.....hoping.

Adventures with the 1940 Census

  My first encounter with the 1940 Census on April 2, 2012 was not a very pleasant one.  The site that I checked first was "1940 census.archives.gov".  The response to my inquiries was very very very slow and when the display finally appeared it was very large writing and did not display the full page.   Also there were lots of error messages such as "cannot display page" and "page not available".  So after a frustrating hour of attempted inquires I quit for the day.  
  I decided to check out Ancestry.com on day two.  Ancestry only had three states completed for viewing.  Even though the states we not the ones I needed, I made a general inquiry in one of them.  To my surprise Ancestry displayed a full page.  The page was very easy to read and the options to enlarge or shrink and to print worked.   Ancestry also informed its users to check back occasionally to see when more states were completed.   On a scale of 1 - 10, day two was a 5.
  On day three the Images for Texas were available for viewing.  My home town is Tomball, Harris, Texas.  Tomball is located about 20 miles northwest of Houston Texas.  In 1940 there was about 1,000 residents within the city limits of Tomball.  There was only one E.D. number for the city.   After a few minutes of looking thru the records I found that my mother (Margie Mitchell) was living in the household of her sister (Willie Maurine Mitchell Thomas).   Also living in the same household was Ralph Loyal Thomas, Maurine's husband and Zeda Parlee Chamness Mitchell, my grandmother.   Day three was a 10!       

Learning From Live Streaming

The genealogy blogs that I have been reading today mention streaming video from the RootsTech 2012 Conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah.  I watched four of these presentations.

• Google's Toolbar & Genealogy.  by: David Barney
• Optimizing Your Site for Search Engines.  by: Robert Gardner
• Publish Your Genealogy Online.  by: Laura Prescott
• Eleven Layers of Online Searches.  by: Barbara Renick

 WOW....WOW....WOW....  After watching all four, I looked at the clock and I could not believe that four hours had passed ever so quickly.  I would like to thank Lorine McGinnis Schulze that posted these conference presentations on her blog  Olive Tree Genealogy.

There are several other presentations that I will be watching at a later date.

City of Tomball Proclamation

Peggy and I went out Monday evening for the regular City of Tomball Council Meeting.  To our surprise the Mayor and Council presented to us a Proclamation declaring Monday March 5, 2012 Larry and Peggy Hugonin Day.  March 5, 2012 was our 48th wedding anniversary.     

GenForum and the Carpenters

While I was doing a Google search on the surname Carpenter last week, one of the hits was on one of my wife's ancestor William Henry Harrison Carpenter.  It was an inquiry in GenForum dated 2005.  I took a chance and sent an email hoping that the email address on the inquiry was still good.  To my surprise I received an email back from a distant cousin of my wife.  This cousins great grandfather wrote articles for the Lebanon Democrat newspaper in Lebanon Tennessee using the pen name "The Observer".  The cousin sent to us copies of transcripts from some articles dated 1891, 1896, 1900 and 1904.  What a joy it is to add these articles to our Carpenter Family files.