Information learned in Tennessee Part 2 – the Smiths

Information learned in Tennessee Part 2 – the Smiths

Gale / Hugh Smith, Smiths / , , /

Trip to Tennessee

I decided I would have to go to Tennessee if I wanted to find out anything more, so I went there last week where I spent a lot of time at the Campbell County Historical Society. With the help of Trulene Nash, a volunteer at the society, we found more information than I ever could have hoped for.

*Note on ancestry.com searches – I should note that the majority of information I got in Tennessee was on ancestry.com, which I could have accessed from home. Apparently I needed the search skills of someone more experienced and Trulene is a former employee of the FBI. Once again I was bit in the butt by my tendency to be too literal. Her searches were more ballpark than precise and that’s what netted all the information. Don’t be too specific (or literal) when searching ancestry.com. There are tons of typos and flat out inaccuracies so you need to broaden your perspective.

Considering I more or less went to Tennessee expecting to come home knowing no more than I did when I left, it ended up being a very worthwhile trip. But to be honest, just seeing where dad lived would have made the trip worth the time and money so I was really thrilled with what I learned.

1940 Census

So let’s start with that 1940 census where they lived at 319 Lick Fork Rd. in Elk Valley. I was shocked to learn there was an adult male in the household since my dad had never once in his life mentioned one, but had said there were two half brothers. Here’s the census information:

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Marriage Certificate

Trulene found the marriage certificate for John and Jane on ancestry.com where I had totally failed. I was looking for Jane and John. She was looking for variations on the name and found JF and Janie.

I had learned that Clay’s father was John F. Smith when I saw the social security numbers for dad and Clay were one number apart. I got curious who had the number in between so I found a way to look it up and discovered it was John F. Smith. I never thought to look for JF.

Since John was born in 1889 and Janie in 1902 that meant she was 23 and he was 34 years old so there was a 13 year difference in age. My dad was 3 years old when his mother married John.

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1930 Census

Once again I have to credit Trulene with this find. I was busy searching Tennessee where she broadened her search and found them in Virginia.

I was once again shocked to see they not only lived in Virginia (which dad had never mentioned) but they stated on the census that 5 year old John Jr. (Clay) and 3 year old David had been born in Virginia. The change in the names of the children was also surprising, but I was learning the quality of information gathering by census takers was less than optimal at times. I also think people changed what they told the census takers. John (the head-of-household) was 52 in the 1940 Census and 36 in this one. I knew from his social security number that his birth year was 1989, so I wondered why about the inaccuracy of his age in 1930. Could the age difference been an issue or had the census taker made a mistake.

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All this left me with a dilemma. Dad was born September 23, 1920. John Smith and Janie Honeycutt married December 28, 1923 so John Smith was not his father and I had no idea how to find who the biological father was. With the help of Trulene I kept looking.

Information learned in Tennessee Part 1 – ♦Intro and Warning♦

Information learned in Tennessee Part 1 – ♦Intro and Warning♦

Gale / Hugh Smith, Smiths / , /

I have always wanted to know more about my dad. One of the big things I had always been curious about was where his clearly part Cherokee looks came from and what the original name of the family had been. If I can discover any of this information I would like it to live on after I’m no longer around to talk about it so I will be posting my discoveries here.

Warning to family members

I need to warn family readers that I found some information related to a story my mom had shared with me that is potentially upsetting. I only knew to look because of what mom told me. If ignorance is bliss do not read Part 4. The other sections don’t contain anything that should ruffle anyone’s feathers.

Ancestry.com

I started with internet research until I hit a wall and couldn’t figure out anything more.

I have a love/hate relationship with ancestry.com. I love the information you can glean from the site but find their monthly fees completely outrageous. I got a 14 day trial membership and beat the website to death for two weeks and didn’t store anything there.

1940 Census released April 3, 2012

The census provided the big kick in the right direction when I finally found dad after checking about 200 pages in Campbell County Tennessee. I about jumped up and down with joy since I was beginning to think it was hopeless that I would ever find him.

I have the .tiff scans of the original pages from ancestry.com as well as the images from the 1940 Census. The census pages are very large and you need a high resolution image to be able to read all the little print and hand-writing. The images are 14 to 18 MB — if anyone is interested in seeing them I would be happy to copy them to disk and send them in the mail. I can also put them on cubby.com so they can be downloaded.

The beginning of discoveries

With the information from the census I found an obituary for one of dad’s half brothers Clay Smith. The surprise on this find was that dad’s half brother had lived in Toledo and worked at Champion Spark Plug yet I’d never heard a word about him.  The obituary referenced both parents and both brothers as preceding him in death so Clay was aware that dad had died.

The obituary also gave me the names of both parents. Do you believe it? John and Jane Smith. That should make the search easier (*sarcasm*). I started searching for the marriage of the parents with no success and wondered if they were common law and not legally married.

It looked like Clay’s wife might still be alive and I wondered if she would talk to me and if she knew anything about her husband’s childhood. She was his second wife that he had married in Toledo so it was hard telling how much he might have talked about things that far in the past.

Trip Scheduled

At this point I felt I was stuck and needed to be on the ground in Tennessee to learn any more so I scheduled a trip there from April 30 to May 5.

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.

Elton Family History

Elton Family History

Gale / Eltons / , /

I’m glad I went through all my saved papers since I found some great stuff.

Back in 1986 Bill and Cheryl Bergemann, Aunt Ovie’s son and daughter-in-law, put together an Elton Family History as a Christmas gift to everyone in the family. The birthdays are listed by month, there’s a list of the family in birth order, and then a list of our grandparents and great-grandparents. My favorite is the “Roots” page.

At the bottom of the page you will find downloads. I scanned all the pages and there is a link to the entire PDF and I also used text recognition to make a spreadsheet of the “Family by Birth Order” pages and a doc of the “Roots” page.

 

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Mamie Madsen Family Tree

Gale / Eltons, Madsens, Mamie Elton / , /

I wasn’t able to find much and would really like it if someone had more to offer on her lineage.

I included the immigration information for Anna in hopes it might lead to more information.

Lily, the first born, died when she was 14 leaving Mamie as the only girl with six brothers. I heard stories of how the Madsen boys would tease grandpa when he’d walk a long distance to visit my future grandmother, telling him she wasn’t worth the walk.

Grandpa was a twin and Lawrence and Louis Madsen were twins. Amazing there haven’t been any twins since. It looks like Louis may have been another casualty of WWI with his death in 1918.

Again, let me know about corrections or additional information so it can be added to the file.

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