Track your forebears with the census, city directories and voter lists

Are you ready to trace an ancestor’s movements in a new city? In one of our telephone conversations, my cousin J.D. told me that our ancestor in common, Henry Kreis, had left New Jersey in 1929 for the sunny shores of California. She didn’t know where in California he had gone. But here is where a census record for 1930 might help.

From experience, I know that on Familysearch.org, you can find census records. However, to look at the actual 1930 census record, Familysearch.org requests that you set up a free account. In the upper right corner of the first screen, click on “Sign In” to open an account.

After I signed in, I did a "residence search." In the name box, I put “Henry Kreis.”  Next, I clicked on “Residence” and filled in CA for “Residence Place” and the years “1930” to “1930” in order to bring up the 1930 US Census records.

As I looked down the results page, I found no matches. But scrolling further down the page, I found a “John H. Kreis.” A quick glance at the record told me this must be my Henry! Four items in the record convinced me this was my ancestor:

1.     The birth date was given as 1875 (Henry’s birth date)

2.     The birth place was given as “Missouri” which fits with

       Henry

3.     The parents’ birth places were given as “Switzerland” which

       again fits with Henry

4.     The place of residence was Los Angeles, CA which fits with J.D.’s belief that a family story said that Henry left New Jersey in 1929, headed for California

I believe that in this new phase of his life, Henry decided to use his first name, John. He couldn’t quite leave “Henry” behind, so he used “H” as his middle initial.

Another piece of information I gleaned from the census record was Henry’s street address: 1517 Stoner Street.  His occupation was given as a “sawyer” in a lumber yard. I had gotten everything I could from the census record. Now, I needed another tool. From previous experience, I knew that with the street address and occupation I had found for Henry, I could search further in the Los Angeles city directories.

Many city directories are on the internet. A quick search on Google confirmed that several Los Angeles directories are available on-line through the Los Angeles Public Library.  In 1932, John appears to have used “Henry” as his first name again. His occupation is listed as “sawyer”. No street address is given, just the information that his residence was “West Los Angeles.”

In 1938 and 1939, he is back to “John H. Kreis”, and is listed as a “yardman” at a lumber company with “West Los Angeles” as his residence. 

Henry/John does not appear in the 1942 Los Angeles City Directory. This could indicate that he had moved or was no longer living. More research needs to be done to determine this.

While the city directories told me that Henry was living in “West Los Angeles’, they didn’t give his street address. Did he live on Stoner or had he moved? I needed another tool. Voter registration records list the street address for each voter.

The 1942 Los Angeles voter records are available at Ancestry.com under “California, Voter Registrations, 1900-1968.” If you don’t have a subscription to Ancestry.com, you can access the program free of charge at many public libraries.

I searched the database for “John Kreis” and found him on the same street, Stoner St, as he was in the 1930 US Los Angeles Census. But I was in for a big surprise. In the 1930 Census, John/Henry was listed as a roomer in the household of Lily Fields. But in the 1942 voting registration list, Lily Fields had become “Lily Kreis”! Yes, Henry had married for the third time.

I didn’t find John or Lily in the 1952 or 1954 California Voter Registration List. I have more digging to do to find where and when my great grandfather,  Henry/John died. I am looking forward to the quest.

As you can see from this project to find Henry's whereabouts in California, I had to consult several sources. If I had stopped after only one, I would have missed so much. Instead I'm celebrating my new found knowledge.




Categories: census, genealogy tools, document types

What Keeps Us Going

I know that you, like me, have met non-genealogists who ask, “How do you keep going? Why don’t you ever give up on an ancestor who seems impossible to find? How many years can you spend looking for someone?”

Well, psychology may give us the answer. My friend, Anne Gomertz from Gastonia, NC, who is a librarian, tech wizard and expert genealogist, used the term “intermittent reinforcement”  to describe what keeps us in the genealogy game. 

How I put this phenomenon in the context of genealogy is that while we go along, doing our diligent research, including:  searching for documents, analyzing  possible relationships, tracing migration trails, scrutinizing maps, searching for living relatives, to name just a few activities we do, we sometimes actually FIND something!

We may get reinforcement for our continuing research efforts in the form of identifying the parents of our target ancestor and even his full name from a record we never knew existed. This happened to me when a genealogical friend found Henry Kreis’ baptismal record in an on-line index. I ordered the microfilm from the Family History Center. The copy is barely legible, so I transcribed it:

Now I knew both Henry's and his parents' full German names. I could use his parents' names to search on passenger records. Before I was searching under "John Kreis" (since that was the only name I had) and found no one that seemed to match. But when he immigrated, he was probably using his German name.

Or we may finally locate our ancestor in a census under an entirely different name – either s/he started going by a middle name or the spelling of the surname was so far off that we had overlooked it all the hundreds of times that we looked at the document before or a newly found living relative tells us she heard a family story that Henry Kreis went to CA in 1929. With that information, I searched for "Kreis" in the 1930 Los Angeles, CA census. And I found: 

Was this my Henry using the name "John"? The birth date is close, the birth place matches and his parents birth places match.

Or a friend and fellow genealogist, sitting by you in a Family History Library looking at the 1920 Essex County, NJ census, figures out the first married name of the head of household that John Kries is living in, and you then immediately recognize her as the character witness in Henry Kreis' first divorce trial.

Or a researcher sends us an obituary with the name of a living relative who turns out to be the grand daughter by this second wife, Henrietta, of my great grandfather! 

Locating a living relative is a wonderful break for a genealogist. But, a word to the wise is important here. Genealogy is all about our relationship with our ancestors. However, a relationship with people who are no longer on this earth is quite different from a relationship with a living person.

When you meet a new person through your genealogical research, you need to follow the same rules of social interaction that govern other meetings. In our zeal to gain information from our new contact, we may be tempted to “hurry” through the initial “getting to know you” stage.

But we do the person and ourselves a disservice if we fall into this trap. Taking the time to really learn about someone can be its own reward. After all, we all yearn to “know” our ancestors. Why miss the chance to “know” our living relations?

When we take the time to build trust by exchanging personal background information and sharing knowledge we have discovered about our shared family lines, we may make discoveries, solve long standing puzzles, or just make a new friend. 

I have just started to build a relationship with J.D. As she is the granddaughter of Henry Kreis and I am his great granddaughter, we are first cousins once removed. J.D. is in her 80s still living in Essex County, NJ where Henry Kreis and his second wife lived in the early 1900s. J.D. was quite surprised to hear from me as she didn’t know I even existed.

 I first called about two weeks before Thanksgiving. It was a momentous contact for me as she is the only person I know who actually had first hand knowledge of Henry Kreis through her mother and other family members. J.D. told me several facts that I didn’t know. She is the person who told me that Henry went to California in 1929. And she reported that Henrietta divorced Henry. When I later requested the divorce record from Tom Ankner, the researcher I was working with in NJ, I saw that the circumstances of the divorce -- non-support, abandonment, and abuse – were eerily similar to the ones that caused Mary Carney, Henry’s first wife, to file for divorce.

So one of my questions had been answered by J.D.’s information. I had wondered why Henry was living apart from his wife in the 1920 census even though Henrietta identified herself as his wife on that same census. Sometimes documents can’t tell the whole story.

But J.D. had a surprise of her own for me. She casually mentioned that her mother had left her a trunk full of photos, including one of John Kreis, and his immigration papers!!

Now, I could hardly breathe. Other genealogists, the very lucky ones, have come across these “trunks” filled with artifacts. But my family’s records seemed to have disappeared. I had often complained about this to my genealogy friends.

I had to remind myself that J.D. didn’t know me and probably wouldn’t want me barging in on her and grabbing that trunk! So, I just thanked her for the information and said that I would send her the documents that I had collected about our ancestors.

But this one interaction with J.D. was sufficient to keep me going for many months to come. I would make more calls to her and hope to gain her trust.

I think of these occurrences as miracles, but I know that they come from building a genealogical community and sharing information, from regularly searching for documents, from working with professional researchers, and from never giving up!

Taken by Szani Uherkovich April 19, 2010 Crocus neapolitanus Used by permission.

Categories: genealogy professional