Family History-Part 46

Discovering the Health Conditions and Disabilities of Your Ancestors in U.S. Census Records

by Brenna Corbit, Technical Services Librarian

Last month, I was working on a Berks County Wentzel line, a Benjamin Wentzel who died in 1902. His obituary states he left a widow “who is blind and confined to bed for some time.” Knowing that some enumeration years had columns to indicate a person’s state of health or disability, I went back to the 1900 U.S. Census and discovered that there were no such columns. However, I did notice a “B” written in the right-hand margin next to his wife Sarah in line 18. 

I started browsing other 1900 census schedules and saw these Bs popping up every so often. I also saw occasional Ds, DDs, BDs, and BDDs appearing in the right margin. Turning to the 1900 census enumerator instructions, I discovered a reference to a special schedule, Form 7-442 Special Schedule for Persons Defective in Sight, Hearing, or Speech.

According to Appendix A in Deaf Mutes in the United States: Analysis of the Census of 1910, Form 7-442 instructed enumerators to mark in the far right margin on the 1900 U.S. Census the aforementioned abbreviations for persons who are blind, deaf, dumb, deaf and dumb, etc. This supplemental form required more detail about a person’s disability, such as whether the disability was congenital or a later development, whether the parents were first cousins, or if caused by an accident.

I am still searching for the availability of this supplemental form from 1900. They are not only valuable for knowing about an ancestor’s full life story, but for the purpose of learning of a genetic defect that may be of use for future prevention.

So far I have not discovered any other extraneous cryptic abbreviations for disabilities, but I have noted below, the separate columns with health and disability questions in other U. S. Census records. Keep in mind that, in the past, some terms for disabilities were not very flattering.

• 1850 to 1870—“Whether deaf and dumb, blind, insane, idiotic, pauper, or convict.”
• 1880—Several health questions: “Is the person (on the day of the enumerator’s visit) sick or temporarily disabled, so as to be unable to attend to ordinary business or duties? If so, what is the sickness or disability?” and separate columns for each: “Health—Blind—Deaf and Dumb—Idiotic—Maimed, crippled, bedridden, or otherwise disabled.”
• 1890—“Whether suffering from acute or chronic disease, with name of disease and length of time afflicted—Whether defective in mind, sight, hearing, or speech, or whether crippled, maimed, or deformed, with name of defect.”
• 1890 Veterans Scheduled—“Disability incurred”
• 1900—no health questions asked, but census records used a B in the right margin to indicate blind; DD (deaf and dumb); D (deaf); BD (blind and deaf); BDD (blind, deaf, and dumb)
• 1910—“Whether blind (both eyes)—Whether deaf and dumb”
• 1920 to 1940—none
• 1950—(release date, April 2022)—none

Most family historians zero in on the more relevant information, such as names, ages, children, and addresses, but they may often ignore these interesting tidbits of cryptic information—they escape me, too, sometimes. I have included the U.S. Census Bureau’s web site for individual decennial census enumerator instructions. I suggest browsing them when you have a chance and discover what you may have been missing in your census searches.

Next time, I will address the fine art of reading the shapes of words.

Book Review: An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor

A Somewhat Belated Irish Novel Series Review
by Brenna J. Corbit, Technical Services Librarian

Yes, I know St. Patrick’s Day is over, and, yes, I know some people like me celebrate Irish heritage the whole month, and some, even more like me, keep that green flame burning year round. Moreover, March 30th was National Physicians Day. So, “what in the name of the wee man” does all this have to do with anything? Why, I am talking about one of my favorite novel series An Irish Country Doctor by Patrick Taylor.

The series begins in 1960s Northern Ireland in the fictional village of Ballybucklebo. Here we meet Dr. Barry Laverty fresh from med-school as he begins his medical career as an assistant in a small rural practice with veteran GP Dr. Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, an eccentric, boisterous, and all-together loveable character, who not only sees to the medical needs of his community, but is pulled into one crazy adventure after another as he helps the unforgettable villagers solve one problem after another. It seems the whole village is held together by him, but one other major character is Mrs. Kinky Kincaid, the rural practice’s housekeeper and cook, who is an underlying force in her own right. The novels are filled with her delicious Irish cooking and the upper hand she often has over Dr. O’Reilly’s ever-expanding waistline.

As the series progresses, we get to know more about other characters, more than this review can cover, but would be well worth mentioning. Currently, I am up to number six, A Dublin Student Doctor, wherein we learn of Dr. O’Reilly’s younger years as a student doctor in the 1930s.
Oh yes, I forgot to mention another doctor, Dr. Patrick Taylor himself, the author of this crazy rambling series. Born in 1941 and raised in Bangor, Northern Ireland, Taylor practiced medicine in Belfast and rural Ulster before immigrating to Canada in the 1970s to pursue research in human infertility. He lives there to this day still adding other volumes to the continuing saga of The Irish Country Doctor.

What better way to celebrate doctors and other medical practitioners? So grab a pint and immerse yourself into another time when a GP’s worries were far out-dwarfed by today’s COVID-19 crisis.

The whole series is available on Hoopla as audiobooks and read by Irish actor John Keating, except for the fourth novel An Irish Country Girl, which is read by Irish actor Terry Donnelly. Both readers offer a fine interpretation of Taylor’s works and characters. Number 14, just published last year, is not yet available as an audiobook on Hoopla, but it is available on Amazon. Overdrive has only one e-book, An Irish Country Christmas. I have presented the entire list in order as I am always Googling it to see which novel is next.

  1. An Irish Country Doctor, 2007
  2. An Irish Country Village, 2008
  3. An Irish Country Christmas, 2008
  4. An Irish Country Girl, 2010
  5. An Irish Country Courtship, 2010
  6. A Dublin Student Doctor, 2011
  7. An Irish Country Wedding, 2012
  8. Fingal O'Reilly, Irish Doctor, 2013
  9. An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War, 2014
10. An Irish Doctor in Love and at Sea, 2015
11. An Irish Country Love Story, 2016
12. An Irish Country Practice, 2017
13. An Irish Country Cottage, 2018
14. An Irish Country Family, 2019

Book Review: Nightjohn by Gary Paulsen

Reviewed by Miriam Stone, Learning Resource and Access Specialist

You won’t find this book on the current bestseller list, or any current list for that matter. It isn’t current – it is timeless and it is true and it hurts to read it. That’s why it needs to be read.

I happened upon it while searching the young adult section of the library one day attempting to help a student find a different book. I have no idea what made me take it from the shelf; maybe it was curiosity about the title.

We don’t have a very large juvenile/young adult collection and I never spend any time there if I don’t have a reason. I knew that Gary Paulsen was an award winning author of books for young adults, but I never read one as a young adult or gave any thought to him when I became an older adult.

This is a story about slavery, a story about the grueling hour by hour existence of human beings when they are subjected to the will of fellow human beings. It was published in 1993 and consists of only 92 pages. In those pages, the true stories of four people are shared and as their lives intertwine, the reader will find himself invested in their pain, their joy, and their tenuous grasp on a better future.

There is Sarny, a twelve year old black slave, and Mammy, an old black woman assigned the task of raising Sarny. Sarny’s birth mother, by the act of giving birth, had demonstrated her ability to breed and was sold for that purpose at an auction when Sarny was four. There is Nightjohn, a slave whose body bears so many scars that a whip would be hard pressed to find any space on him that could inflict a new scar. 

Nightjohn had once escaped to freedom, but driven by a single-minded purpose, he came back to an unbearable existence. He is purchased by a man named Waller, our fourth character, who forces those he owns to call him Master Waller. His title is significantly different when he is not within earshot of those he torments; it more resembles something like “wallow” followed by a description of that in which his slaves wish for him to slog about.

Don’t be fooled by the brevity of this book or the audience to whom it is directed. This book paints a vivid, ugly picture of the bloody violence, degradation, filth, starvation and assault of people perpetrated by other people.

It takes far less than an hour to read, but once read, its message must remain in our heads and our hearts forever. Every generation believes that it has the power to end racism, and every generation does. But there are no shortcuts. It begins at the beginning.

“The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you will see.” Winston Churchill

Book Review: The Institute by Stephen King

Reviewed by Miriam Stone, Learning Resource and Access Specialist

The name Stephen King is synonymous with the word "horror, and fortunately or unfortunately, horror never goes out of style. Those who chanced upon King in the early days of Salem’s Lot and Carrie will always keep looking for the same something they found irresistible in his early work. They won’t find it because it doesn’t exist anymore. Time changes everything and King changed a lot.

His early days were spent in a drug-induced stupor and he admits that he doesn’t remember writing some of his best sellers like Salem’s Lot and The Shining. He does say, however, that when reading these works he understands why he would have written them. When he finally got clean, he wrote some books that we, as his audience, would like to not remember. However, it did not dim his popularity and as he became famous, he took control over the editing process of his books.

He began writing books in which the protagonist becomes isolated somehow from civilization. It is evident in Gerald’s game in The Institute. The heroine of the piece becomes handcuffed to a bed alone in an isolated place with nothing to keep her company but her dead husband and a flesh-m nbveating dog. As she futily tries to free herself, she ponders her life thus far trying to understand how she came to be in this somewhat hopeless situation.

King becomes the protagonist and three quarters of the book is devoted to his thoughts, his hopes, his despair and his projections for the future. He began writing books about the future he envisions for this world and has returned a few times to the theme of innocent children exploited by evil men who justify their cruel actions with their belief that these actions will be for the greater good of all mankind. The Institute is the latest work by King to follow this premise.

Luke is a 12 year old genius with a minor talent in telekinesis. In the middle of the night, his parents are murdered and Luke is kidnapped and taken to the Institute where he finds other children with paranormal talents. He is told by one child that he is in the “front” part of the Institute and his goal should be to stay there. The “back” part is like the roach motel – kids check in but they don’t check out.

The purpose of the Institute is to transform the children into psychic weapons of destruction in an endless war against political enemies. It is so driven to this end that it fails to understand two very important factors – Luke’s prodigious intellect and the ability of this newly created “psychic weapon” to be used against them. A revolution takes place and dramatically shifts the balance of power.

Book Review: Howard Stern Comes Again by Howard Stern

Reviewed by Miriam Stone, Learning Resource and Access Specialist

It is difficult to write about Howard Stern. His name is provocative, his opinions are over the top, and his actions spit in the face of good taste.
He built a cottage industry based on, for want of a better phrase, bathroom and bedroom humor and amassed a fortune doing it.

How is that possible? It is because from the beginning, in the middle of this mayhem, Stern showed flashes of brilliance and people began to sit up and take notice.

Whether these people were actually “in” on what Stern was doing didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were afraid to admit they might not be “in” on it.

Stern built an audience of well-connected, well-known people trying hard to be the Stern standard of cool. Actors, politicians, actually anyone known for anything clamored to be interviewed on his radio show. Fading celebrities were suddenly mainstream again, political views and the politician viewing them, not welcome on prime time found a home with Stern. Products that languished on storeroom shelves, immediately sold out when Stern mentioned them on air.

It became known that regardless of his questions, Stern was an excellent and fair interviewer.

His first two books, Private Parts and Miss America were the fastest selling books in publishing history. A movie based on Private Parts and starring Stern became an instant hit. Even mainstream critics like Gene Siskal and Roger Ebert loved it and loved Stern in it.

Stern went from terrestrial radio to late night TV, airing his interviews, and in 2006 he emigrated to Sirius Satellite Radio helping it to grow from a fledgling experiment into a 33 million subscriber empire.

Through it all, Stern’s anthem was “standards have gone to an all time low and I’m here to represent them.”

Flash forward 24 years to Howard Stern Comes Again, a new book for which he is doing an extensive press tour. Die-hard Stern fans waited a long time for their hero to write something new and a great many of them are wondering why they bothered waiting.

Although Stern made clear several times over on his radio program that this book was a compilation of selected interviews he had done for radio, it appeared that no one listened.

The book sold out and orders for new ones were rushed to the printer. However, Stern followers are angry that they spent good money to see in print, something they had already heard when the interviews originally aired.

They also weren’t prepared for the new and improved Stern. A lot had happened to him in 24 years. He divorced, lost touch with his daughters, and had a major health scare, all or some of which drove him into therapy. He shares his philosophy of life with his fans in a book that occasionally reads like a series of love letters to those he interviewed.

One celebrity that he brutally butchered for years was Rosie O’Donnell. He now says “how could I have missed out in my life on someone so special because of some dumb posturing on the radio?”

He hopes this collection captures his evolution and ultimately becomes his legacy.

He lives quietly with his wife of 11 years, Beth, and provides foster care for thousands of cats who are awaiting a forever home. His contract with Sirius has two more years to run and at that point, Stern will evaluate his future. He says he has achieved a more comfortable balance between doing a good radio show and being able to live with himself.

Those who are skeptical that Stern has anything left to offer will ultimately decide if he is still worth tuning in on Sirius radio. What they may find is that this new and improved Stern has definitely not lost his edge.

America’s Reluctant Prince: The Life of John F. Kennedy Jr. by Steven M. Gillon

YOCUM CALL # E843.K42 G55 2019

Book Review:
by Miriam Stone, Learning Access and Resource Specialist

It has been said that John F. Kennedy Jr. exerted great caution in choosing friends. It seems that he must have been drawn to writers since there have been so many publications written by those who proclaim to be part of “John’s inner circle,” “John’s closest confidantes,” and “John’s chosen pals.”

This particular writer, Steven M. Gillon, was 25 and a graduate student at Brown University when he met John, 21 and a junior. Their paths crossed off and on for more than ten years and in that time, a friendship developed. It is somewhat refreshing that Gillon readily admits that he was not one of Kennedy’s closest confidantes, merely a spoke on the wheel that surrounded one of the most public figures of all time. He examines Kennedy’s life and his legend and he does an admirable job of separating the myth from the man.

The John Kennedy Jr. that Gillon speaks of is a reasonably intelligent, handsome, personable man who knows what his role in history will be. He is aware that no matter how hard he tries, people will not see him. They will see a person whose life is played out internationally by a media that will interpret what they see and use it to their advantage. However, it is far from one-sided. Kennedy is a mastermind of manipulation when it comes to the press and he is not above using the users to further his own purpose. It all becomes a strange dance between two adversaries and somewhere in the middle lies the truth.

Gillon gives a full-spectrum account of Kennedy’s life and he gives the reader something more.

He is an expert on modern American history (his credits are in his by-line) and by using his skills as a researcher and historian, he digs up previously classified Secret Service documents and long closed FBI files. He tells the story of John F. Kennedy Jr. and it becomes an excellent comprehensive study of the Kennedy legacy and of a family who continues to influence our world.