You Probably Did Not Know This About Census Records. I Know I Didn't

     

     Back in the dark ages before newspapers were digitized, indexed, and readily available online, I ordered the microfilm of my ancestor's hometown paper from the New York State Library.  In it I found a trove of wonderful information, along with one article that confused me.  My second-great-aunt's husband, Patrick O'Neil was irate that the census showed an extra child in his household.  Now how did he know that I wondered?  Perhaps he was shown the entry at some point?  I really didn't pursue it at the time.

     Years later while visiting the office of the Cayuga County historian, I copied the 1850 census record of Elizabeth McGarr Burns, my third-great-aunt.

     After I later subscribed to Ancestry, I accessed the same census on their site to attach it to my online tree.  Surprisingly, it was very different than the one I had transcribed in the historian's office; the one on Ancestry contained four individuals with the surname Thomas and William Condon had become a Burns.  What was going on, had I make a mistake?

1850 census of Aurelius on Ancestry

     After a little research I found the answer.  Up to the year 1880 there were several copies made of the census.  One copy was kept locally, in some cases one was made for the state, and the third copy was sent to the Federal Government.  The copy I used in Auburn was the local copy, the ones seen on Ancestry are Federal copies.  Somehow, in transcribing the census for Washington the surname Thomas was mistakenly inserted.  As we know, the more hands involved in recording documents the greater the chance for error, but to add a new, very different surname seemed quite careless.  

     This could seriously impact ones family tree.  Initially I had discounted the Burns clan in the 1850 census found on Ancestry as probably the wrong family.  It makes me wonder how many seemingly missing census entries are in fact hiding under false names and facts?

     While studying all this, I also found the answer to the question of how Pat O'Neil knew he had acquired another child in 1880.  Not only were there multiple copies of early censuses, up until 1870, they could be viewed, unredacted, immediately.  The 1880 census left a few facts out of the local copy to offer some privacy, but none of this waiting 72 years as we presently are required to do.  Once it was published in 1880 Patrick was free to read it.  We should be so lucky.

     

There's Just Something About An Old Cemetery

 

     One of my favorites on You Tube is a series called Sidestep Adventures.  It's an amateur enterprise consisting of videos made by a man named Robert and his sidekicks as they explore cemeteries in Georgia.  The older and less accessible the better.  This series featuring titles like, "Abandoned Cemetery Found in The Woods", and "Civil War Soldier Found In Abandoned Cemetery", kept me amused all last winter while a snow-covered ground made cemetery rambles unpleasant and unproductive here in upstate New York.

     A few days ago, it felt as though I had stepped into one of those videos myself.  There is a very old burial ground in Auburn, New York called Cold Spring Cemetery that I'd long wanted to visit.  This was the first Catholic cemetery in Auburn and many of the city's famine immigrants are interred there, including relatives of mine.  An inventory done in 1964 listed several McGarr and O'Hora stones, as did another done in 1984, so bright and early one morning my friend and I set out on the fifty-mile drive.

     While most of the cemetery is mowed, there is a section near the center that is completely overgrown with small, thorny trees and heavy brush.  I'm usually not deterred by that sort of thing when in pursuit of an ancestor's burial place, but this situation would have required a machete which I did not think to bring.  Next time!  You can see the jungle in the photo at the top of this page behind the large tree in the center. There are more graves to the left of that and behind it, so I'm pretty sure there are some inside the overgrown area as well.  There's also a view of the thicket in the picture below.

     One of the stones I most wanted to see was that of John McGarr, the brother of my third-great-grandfather Daniel McGarr.  Daniel never left Ireland, but John came to Auburn in the late 1830's where he opened a grocery and saloon.  In New York State's 1855 census, John stated he'd been in Auburn for seventeen years.  That would make his arrival year 1838, and though I've found those dates as given by the immigrants are often off by a few years, John married Mary Kelly at Holy Family Catholic Church in Auburn on 21 September of 1840, so an immigration date of 1838 is probably pretty close.  Luckily, we did locate Uncle John though his stone was in sorry shape like many of the other markers there.

The flag is for John's son Daniel, who died in the Civil War and is buried here

     We also found a few O'Hora stones, but most were so broken and eroded they were all but illegible.  Exploring the other side of the cemetery we noticed a path of sorts leading into a wooded area on its border.  No more than a few yards in we began seeing remnants of gravestones, some nearly intact.  Clearly the graveyard had extended into that area.  This was the point where I began feeling like I was in one of the You Tube videos, especially when that snake slithered under a fallen stone in front of me.  Unfortunately, none of the tombstones in that area could be read, but finding Uncle John made the trip a great success in my eyes.

     I snapped the photo below as we were leaving, while reflecting on the lives of the people who were laid to rest all about me.  They were driven from their country, endured a long, horrendous voyage across the North Atlantic by sail, and then battled prejudice and poverty to build a new life on these shores.  Only to end up here, in a slowly crumbling cemetery so far from home.  After all they'd been through, it seemed to me the least they deserved was to be remembered, if not a well-tended grave.