Family History Tips--Part 11

Census Record Mistakes and Anomalies

by Brenna Corbit, Technical Services Librarian

We have already looked at various issues of faulty indexing of primary sources. But in many cases, the problem lies with the record itself. Census records, in particular, may have several types of faults.

Census taking was not as easy as today, which consists of a mailed form to be filled out and returned. The 2020 numeration will most likely have an electronic filing option. Early census takers lugged a large book of blank forms from door to door. We already examined the issues of language barriers, spelling errors, and illegible handwriting associated with these records, but there were other issues that happened in that door-to-door method.

Sometimes no one answered the door, resulting in several outcomes. Ask the next-door neighbors, which can explain the misinformation of names, ages or places of birth. Or sometimes the census taker made a note that a residence was unoccupied, causing the enumerator to return at a later date. These last entries will show up on the last page of the enumeration. 

1920 census enumerator—www.census.gov

In some cases, a person refused to answer the door, such as with my Polish great grandfather. “Pop didn’t answer the door to anyone who didn’t speak Polish,” my great uncle once said. But sometimes a household is simply forgotten. If so, annual city directories are an alternative for locating a residence. Many city directories have been digitized on Ancestry and other websites.

In some cases, an individual or a family may be on the move the same day the enumerator appeared to record a locality, resulting in a complete miss. Again, a city directory may locate a person. In some rare cases, people show up in two places. Enumerations often took place over several months in the year. Therefore, a person recorded in one location, may be recorded again at a later date. An example of this occurred in my family. My great grandfather’s brother shows up in prison on 18 April 1910, and then at home with his mother on 25 April 1910. Either he was released between the 18th and 25th of April, or his mother simply included him because that was his residence  prior to his incarceration.

Recently, I have noticed jumbled residences in census records, of which I have no explanation for the cause. In one case, a family was split on two different pages, as if the parents and children were living apart from each other. But a close examination of the street and house number of both records indicated they were in the same household. In a similar case, it first appeared that my great aunt lived with a mystery-man. Always carefully examine every column in the census forms.

Another easily rectified problem occurs when a household extends to the next census page. In one case, Emanuel Riffert and his wife Elizabeth appear in the last two lines, and their son Andrew appears on the next page. The indexer of this census simply forgot to turn the page to include the son.

While not the enumerator’s fault, you may have to search the census images without the aid of an index due to indexing errors. If you know the address in which a person lived, you can search that enumeration district. Use the website aid, Unified Census ED Finder to locate a district.

In some cases, especially in sparsely populated places such as the western states, enumerators falsely recorded population counts to gain voting districts or statehood. Some families would be repeated in other areas, or some families would be pure fabrication (1).

(1) Szucs, Loretto Dennis and Matthew Wright, Finding Answers in U.S. Census Records, Orem, UT, Ancestry Publishing, 2001.

Sauerkraut: It’s Good for What Ails You

by Marcina Wagner, Reference Librarian

If making sauerkraut is an activity that you would never consider, you can stop reading now because the intention of this article is to persuade you to try it. Eating fermented food is one of the healthiest strategies you can employ, and sauerkraut is one of the easiest and cheapest foods to make in your kitchen. 

We use the sauerkraut recipe minus the juniper berries by Alton Brown; it’s at the foodnetwork.com. This recipe is foolproof; the prep time is 15 minutes, and the wait time is 4 weeks. 

Before we found the recipe, we typically only ate sauerkraut with pork on New Year’s Day. It’s now a year-round dish, and during this time of year, we enjoy a sauerkraut soup adding some chicken broth, potatoes, and onions in addition to frankfurters or sausage. Rye or pumpernickel bread with cultured butter accompanies it. I have even read of making a chocolate cake with sauerkraut. 

The Yocum Library has The Art of Fermentation, a classic reference book, by Sandor Ellix Katz. Pickles will be a logical progression for you. After our trip to Katz’s Deli in NYC, we tried to duplicate their half sours and did a credible job. My next project‐‐‐fermented pickle relish. 

BOOK REVIEW: RFK, Jr. Challenges Cousin's Murder Conviction

Framed – Why Michael Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison for a Murder He Didn’t Commit 

by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Review by Miriam Stone, Yocum Library's Learning Resource and Access Specialist

Martha Moxley had almost everything a 15 year old girl could want. She was pretty, extremely popular and she lived in the richest community in the country, Greenwich Connecticut. But, she was missing something – her life. Martha was bludgeoned to death in her driveway on October 30, 1975.

Police on the scene reported that Martha had been beaten so badly with a golf club that her head looked like a smashed pumpkin. The gold club broke into three pieces and the murderer used part of the shaft to stab Martha through the neck. 

These things never occurred in the affluent society of Belle Haven, Greenwich, CT. Not only were the police ill equipped to handle a crime of this magnitude, the citizens of the town viewed it as an embarrassment, a blight on their perfect existence and one best not discussed with anyone, especially outsiders. 

The killer was not found and the unfortunate episode of Martha’s death faded into the past – that is until 2002, thirty-seven years after the murder when Martha’s friend and neighbor, Michael Skakel, was convicted and sentenced to 20 years to life.

The Skakel’s were related to the Kennedy’s, although the Skakels were much wealthier and Republican and never had much contact with their more famous cousins. Michael had been in prison for over 10 years, when he finally won an appeal for a new trial and Robert Kennedy took up his defense.

This is the story of a man, convicted of committing his friend’s murder when both were 15 years old. It is a story that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants told because he claims that Michael was framed. In declaring Michael’s innocence, Kennedy cuts a sweeping path of condemnation that involves a crooked cop, an inept police force, a famous writer, a treacherous family lawyer, a defense attorney obsessed by the spotlight, a prosecutor gone rogue and an arsenal of perjuring witnesses. He doesn’t stop there. He uncovers a mountain of evidence against two men and he is so sure of their guilt that he names them in his book, urging them to sue him if they are innocent.

Is Michael Skakel an innocent victim of a corrupt system or a cold blooded killer that savagely beat his friend to death when they were 15 years old? Does Kennedy prove that Michael was framed by this very system or is Kennedy using it to frame two men so that his cousin can go free? The reader can’t sit on the fence on this one. By the time they are finished with the book they will most definitely have an opinion.

[Editor's Note: Skakel has been free on $1.23 million bail since 2013 when he was granted a new trial on the grounds that he received poor representation from his lawyer. However, in late December 2016, the Connecticut Supreme Court reinstated his murder conviction after determining his lawyer provided adequate representation. Skakel is currently waiting to find out if (and when) he will be returned to prison.]

Yocum Library Staff in the News: Steven Mathews

Steven Mathews, a part-time Yocum Library Assistant, presented a paper, called “Haydn and the Type 2 Sonata: Getting to the Crux in Three Slow Symphonic Movements from the 1760s,” at a meeting of the Haydn Society of North America in Vancouver, British Columbia on November 2. 

His paper was selected by peer review in August from a general call for papers among Haydn scholars worldwide. This presentation was a shorter version of a chapter on the music of Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) from his in-progress PhD dissertation (“Getting to the Crux of the Type 2 Sonata: Contextual Analyses of J. C. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert”) in music theory from the University of Cincinnati.

Steven's reviews of periodicals carried by The Yocum Library regularly appear in his column Magazine Mondays on our Facebook page and our blog. Check them out!

Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

January: The Start of the New Year and New Adventures

Oxford Dictionaries' Shortlist for 2016 Word of the Year

Yesterday, we mentioned that Oxford Dictionaries.com had chosen "post-truth" as its 2016 Word of the Year. Here are some of the other words that made the shortlist while Oxford Dictionaries' staff contemplated the choice for 2016 Word of the Year. 

alt-right (noun)
An ideological grouping associated with extreme conservative or reactionary viewpoints, characterized by a rejection of mainstream politics and by the use of online media to disseminate deliberately controversial content.

Brexiteer (noun, informal)
A person who is in favour of the United Kingdom withdrawing from the European Union.

chatbot (noun)
A computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users, especially over the Internet.

Latinx (noun)
A person of Latin American origin or descent (used as a gender-neutral or non-binary alternative to Latino or Latina).

For a complete list,  click on the Oxford Dictionaries link. For more information about each word, click on the word.

Oxford Dictionaries' 2016 Word of the Year: Post-truth

Oxford Dictionaries announced "post-truth" as its 2016 international Word of the Year. The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is a word or expression chosen to reflect the passing year in language. 

post-truth adjective
Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.

Every year, the Oxford Dictionaries team reviews candidates for word of the year and then debates their merits, choosing one that captures the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of that particular year. Language research conducted by Oxford Dictionaries editors reveals that use of the word post-truth has increased by approximately 2,000% over its usage in 2015.

The concept of post-truth has been in existence for the past decade, but Oxford Dictionaries has seen a spike in frequency this year in the context of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States.

It has also become associated with a particular noun, in the phrase "post-truth politics." The compound word post-truth exemplifies an expansion in the meaning of the prefix post- that has become increasingly prominent in recent years. Rather than simply referring to the time after a specified situation or event – as in post-war or post-match – the prefix in post-truth has a meaning more like "belonging to a time in which the specified concept has become unimportant or irrelevant." This nuance seems to have originated in the mid-20th century, in formations such as post-national (1945) and post-racial (1971).

"It’s not surprising that our choice reflects a year dominated by highly-charged political and social discourse," says Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Dictionaries. "Fuelled by the rise of social media as a news source and a growing distrust of facts offered up by the establishment, post-truth as a concept has been finding its linguistic footing for some time."

Grathwohl goes on to say, ‘"We first saw the frequency really spike this year in June with buzz over the Brexit vote and again in July when Donald Trump secured the Republican presidential nomination. Given that usage of the term hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down, I wouldn’t be surprised if post-truth becomes one of the defining words of our time."

The Word of the Year need not have been coined within the past twelve months. To qualify for consideration we look for evidence that its usage has increased significantly across a broad range of media. On the basis of that evidence, post-truth made it into OxfordDictionaries.com this month.

Post-truth seems to have been first used in this meaning in a 1992 essay by the late Serbian-American playwright Steve Tesich in The Nation magazine. Reflecting on the Iran-Contra scandal and the Persian Gulf War, Tesich lamented that "we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world." 

There is evidence of the phrase "post-truth" being used before Tesich’s article, but apparently with the transparent meaning "after the truth was known," and not with the new implication that truth itself has become irrelevant.

Content from Oxford Dictionaries.com

Magazine Monday: Popular Science

Review of Popular Science
by Steven D. Mathews, Library Assistant

The Yocum Library subscribes to the print edition of Popular Science, a magazine that features accessible articles not only about current science topics but also predictions about the future.

This general-audience magazine also has a long history of evolution. The periodical was first published in the mid-nineteenth century as a monthly scholarly journal that housed some of the writings of Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, and other fin-de-siècle pioneers in science, philosophy, and technology.

However, the twentieth century created numerous problems for the publishers of Popular Science Monthly in terms of declining readership and sales. In 1915, the articles for educated readers were taken up by the publishers of what would eventually be named Science later in the century. This split created an opportunity for the writers and editors of Popular Science to focus on disseminating their knowledge into bite-sized articles for the general public that focused on everyday technologies and trades (e.g., cars, electronics, and other mechanics).

Starting in January 2016, Popular Science became a bi-monthly periodical, which means they only publish six issues a year—a big change after publishing one issue each month since 1872. The issues reviewed—Nov/Dec 2016, “100 Greatest Inventions,” and Jan/Feb 2017, “Explore”—separate into four pithy titles: Now, Next, Features, and Manual. 

The Now sections contain nuggets on some of today’s existing tools, experiments, crises, and gadgets, such as the Apple Watch, Uber’s self-driving cars, and how the tablet is replacing the laptop (or not). The Next sections speculate on potential explorations of deep space and oceans, twenty-second century climate predictions, and what “psychonauts” can learn about the benefits and harms of injesting various drugs and substances. 

The Manual sections are perhaps the most interesting and practical. For example, the “Explore” issue contain lists of essentials for “The Modern Explorer” (besides your smartphone): food, power, another “burner” phone, communication in cellular-lacking areas, first aid, water, navigation, and rain protection. 

Three of these sections (Now, Next, and Manual) average 1–2 pages, which leaves room for a few detailed featured articles. The latter are not simply pages and pages of text, however. They include large photos, designs, and creative approaches to narrative. 

For example, one feature, “The Proxima Trail,” found on p. 69 of “Explore,” is written completely as screenshots (on an Apple II, to boot!) that imitate the classic Oregon Trail video game from the 1970s and 80s. Instead of going from Missouri to Oregon in the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the Proxima Trail takes to you a new solar system during a nine-year journey (3017–3026). The parallels are astonishing, nonetheless.

The Sugar Blues

by Marcina Wagner, Reference Librarian

If one of your New Year’s resolutions for 2017 includes losing weight, you already know that you need to eliminate or cut down on sugar. Although the consumption of sugar remains controversial—a recent article in the New York Times, “How the Sugar Industry Shifted the Blame to Fat,” reveals that since the 1960s, the industry has downplayed the negative effects of sugar— medical professionals have linked it directly to the obesity epidemic, and Dr. David Kessler, former head of the Food and Drug Administration, claims that it is as addictive as cigarettes. 

In Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, Michael Moss argues that the food industry is jeopardizing our health by creating products that generate cravings for those three ingredients. Perhaps the industry’s interest in its bottom line rather than our well-being will motivate you to ban sugar from your diet. 

Yocum has many vegan cookbooks, The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone, for example, that provide desserts made without sugar although the sweeteners can be as high in calories as sugar. Better yet have fresh fruit for dessert or a snack. If your pantry has a canister of sugar left over from making holiday cookies, here’s an idea:

Make a sugar scrub for yourself or as a gift. The article, “Heal with Herbs” from Organic Gardening, found on ProQuest, offers this moisturizing body scrub, perfect for this wintry time of year.

Recipe
½ cup coconut oil
1 cup sugar
10 drops of your favorite essential oil (I’m going to use lavender.)

Mix the ingredients together then store in a glass jar.

P.S. The Yocum Library owns Sidney W. Mintz’s Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. This book is a classic in the field of Food Studies.

Do You Believe in New Year's Resolutions?

Have you made any resolutions as the new year begins? Or maybe you make and keep resolutions all year long? Or you believe in just letting things happen? Whatever your beliefs about resolutions, what are your hopes for 2017? Let us know in the comments for this post.

Another Student Work of Art on Display at The Yocum Library

Ever wonder what to do with your old books? Well, students Shauna Shaffer, Mayra Perez, and Hannah High took some old nursing books and turned then into a dress for Joanne Schlosser's ART 230: 3D Design class. You can see the dress in The Yocum Library along with numerous other works of art from the class.

Happy New Year to all!

The Yocum Library staff wishes our colleagues, students and Berks County community a very healthy and happy 2017.