Smiths

Bound for Tennessee with info from 1940 Census

Gale / Hugh Smith, Smiths / , /

I figure while I have the momentum going I should get to Tennessee to see what I can find out about my dad.

I made some calls to make sure the trip would be worthwhile and found out only marriage and divorce records will be at the Campbell County courthouse in Jacksboro so I will start there to hopefully find:

  • his parents’ marriage license so I can get his mother’s maiden name
  • dad’s marriage and divorce information from his early marriage
  • marriage information for Clay and Dave Smith so I might be able to track down their children

After I get that information I will have to go to Tennessee Vital Records in Nashville armed with dad’s mother’s maiden name to see if  I can track down his birth certificate. Tennessee didn’t start recording birth certificates until 1908 so that eliminates records for his parents. I will see what I can find out about dad’s siblings births also.

I had planned to ride my motorcycle, but it turned out using air miles to book a flight and rent a car was cheaper since it saved two travel days.  I’m leaving April 30 and returning May 5.  I’ll rent a car at the Nashville airport and head to Campbell county to research and check out where dad lived as a boy. I may ask around while there to see if I can find any family members. Then is will be back to Nashville to find birth certificates before heading home.

I found a well reviewed little motel in La Follette where I’ll be staying. I’m taking two cameras so I plan to come home with a lot of pictures.

 

I leave April

1940 Census released and success finding dad

1940 Census released and success finding dad

Gale / Hugh Smith, Smiths / , /

I was very frustrated after going round and round with Tennessee Vital Records and paying for a birth certificate for my father and ending up with nothing. They couldn’t come up with anything at all and gave up.

I didn’t know if there was anywhere to go with the search into his background, and really feared I would never be able to find anything out.

Then I read an article on CNN.com about how the 1940 census records were released on April 2 and how many hits the site is getting. I headed for the site. Campbell county records were in 21 chunks, ranging from a few pages to 50 pages. I downloaded all 21 sections and started unzipping them one by one and reading each of the JPGs. They had taken pictures of every single page of the large census books and, of course, the records were all hand written. I knew dad would have been 20 in 1940, but I didn’t know if he was still living at home, moved out on his own, or gotten married at that point so I wasn’t sure what I was looking for.

A couple hundred pages into it I was getting discouraged but thought it would all be worthwhile if I found something out.  I was starting to ponder how I’d feel if I went through all 1000+ pages and came up empty handed when I hit the jackpot on page 508.

Entries from census book:

What the census revealed

He was living at home, his parents’ names were John and Jonie, his younger brothers were Clay and Dave, and they lived at 319 Lick Fork Rd. in Elk Valley, TN where they rented. John, my 19 year old dad, and 15 year old Clay were all listed as coal miners.

The big surprise? My father had never, ever (and I mean never) mentioned a father. Since John was 52 at the time of the census and Jonie 39 and Jonie had my dad when she was 19 I suspect dad was born before their marriage and he ended up taking the name Smith. That would explain why I had no luck finding a birth certificate. It would most likely be in his mother’s maiden name. So I have great clues to go to Tennessee and continue the search.

The census image was hard to read to get the heading and the answers for dad’s family further down the page so I dumped it into a Excel worksheet:

It told me he’d worked 48 weeks as a miner in 1939 and made $400. $400???

Fork Lick?

I found 319 Fork Lick Rd which is no longer in Elk Valley, but now incorporated into Pioneer, TN.

All great information that may make my trip to Tennessee more successful.

Census search for mom’s family

After finding dad I went to look at the census records for my mom. I had been inwardly griping about the difficulty of working with the images for Campbell county and found they were great compared to Mountrail county in North Dakota. Instead of being able to download groups, they’ve posted each image separately. Not sure I’m ready to go through that right now after 6 hours of downloading and opening images. I’ll go back to it another day.

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