I had never been able to find Charles Allen in the 1900 census, which is the last census he was in before he died in 1905. In conjunction with re-starting the research on the Chapman line, I am going back to census records for the rest of the C-A-T people. Mostly, this involves UK census records before they all came to the USA, but I decided to make sure the census records were as complete as I could get them for all family groups.

And so I finally found Charles Allen, written on the census record as Carly Allen. Duh. This enumerator had sloppy handwriting, and the indexer wasn’t much better. But yeah, it says Carly. It’s hard to research a common name like Allen (and Chapman, and Thompson) because it takes so long going through all the names, even when they are indexed correctly. I probably had looked at this entry in the index previously, but this time the name Carly just jumped out at me and screamed, Look At Me! And sure enough, that was really Charles. The census says he was born in “Ingland” LOL.

I have finished the page for Julia Mabel Holder, and have included the last photos of the ones I scanned from her photo album. All the details are on that page, so I won’t repeat them here. This was a very time-consuming project, trying to decipher the words written next to the photos, trying to figure out who the people were (which required some extra genealogical work to find siblings and spouses), picking out the photos that were worth taking the time to scan, doing the actual scanning, cropping the photos and uploading them, then entering all the information on the page for Julia. It was a lot of work, and you may not be very impressed when you see the quality of the photos, but believe me, I did the best I could with the quality of the photos I had to work with.

I am slowing making progress on the new Chapman information.

I found William Chapman and Sarah Harvey’s marriage in the index. They were married 15 May 1848 in South Carlton, Lincolnshire. Once I knew the correct parent names, and saw on the census that their first two children were born in South Carlton, I knew to check South Carlton for a marriage record. Even though both William and Sarah were born in Reepham, they lived in South Carlton long enough for their first two children to be born, then they moved back to Reepham where the rest of the children were born.

Also found in the index the marriage of Charles Allen and Mary Jane Thompson, 21 Oct 1847 in Washingborough, Lincolnshire. These are indexes that a family history society has transcribed and put online at mi.lincolnshiremarriages.org.uk.

After taking a few days to read about UK history as it pertains to genealogical research, I decided to try finding William Chapman (born 1861) in the 1881 census. He was on every census with the family except 1881, when he was 19. The history book said that young people, starting in their teens, would usually go somewhere to be an apprentice or servant for a few years. In these cases, servant means any type of worker, and as we are talking about farmers here, they did some kind of agricultural labor (abbreviated as ag lab in many records). So I did a general search for William in 1881, trying to see if he was working as an ag lab somewhere.

The fourth record on the search results turned out to be him, although at first I almost didn’t look at the record because of the wrong information. The results said:

Name: William Chapman
Parent or Spouse: (blank)
Birth Year: abt 1862
Birth Place: Bishop Norton, Lincoln, England
Relationship to Head: Servant
Residence Place: Aston Cum Aughton, Yorkshire

Some of this is correct, the name, and Parent or Spouse should be blank because he’s probably still single at 19. The Birth Year of abt (about) 1862 is good because he was born in December 1861. And Relationship is Servant, which is what I was thinking he would be. But he was definitely not born in Bishop Norton, and I was skeptical of him living in Yorkshire. But I looked at the actual image anyway.

It really is him, but whoever wrote down the information made a weird error. When listing household members on a census form, they list Head of household first, then spouse if any, then children in order of age (oldest first), then any other relatives like maybe a nephew, then servants or boarders that live there at the bottom. The household is the Clark family, and there are two servants, our William and another William. The information in all the columns is entered on the correct lines, except for the NAME. The youngest child Grace Clark is listed after the two servants, for some reason. Of these three, Grace should be first age 9, then the other William age 21, then our William age 19. The line that Grace’s name is on says Where Born is Repham Lincolnshire, but I double-checked and she was really born in Notthinghamshire, where the rest of her siblings were also born.

These names are at the very bottom of the page, and below Grace it says End Of Enumeration. So apparently the enumerator was really tired at the end of all that work and just got the names on the wrong lines??? He must have missed Grace’s name at first, and when he realized he forgot to write her down, he just wrote the name at the bottom and thought, so what who cares??

So William was really not hiding in 1881, but the enumerator did his best to hide him anyway. And the town he was living in is Swallownest, in Yorkshire. I don’t know why they put the civil parish in the index (Aston cum Aughton) instead of the town. I would think most people will look for a town rather than a civil parish. And the column for “Road, Street, or Name of House” says Lawn Farm.

Just goes to show how sometimes you have to go off on a tangent and research some complete strangers who are unrelated, in order to prove you have the right person after all 😀

I have found some more information on the Chapman line, but first I need to find a new genealogy program. I have been using The Master Genealogist, but the owner/developer has decided to suspend the product. That is a real shame because I have not found another genealogy program that is as detailed and configurable. The owner has had some health issues, and after 25 years has decided to retire. Another reason is, TMG appeals more to the professional genealogist, and so has a smaller customer base than other programs by big organizations like LDS or ancestry.com, which cater more to the hobbyist genealogist.

My plan right now is to find a new program, and then start entering my data into it. That way, I can double-check everything as I go. After using a program for so long, and entering data that is not always definite but I enter it anyway so I don’t lose track of it, the data tends to get messy. And because I’m pretty much starting over on the Chapman line, it makes sense to enter the new data into the new program, rather than enter it now and then all over again when I get a new program. No doubt I could export a GEDCOM file of data and import that into a new program, but I would lose all my exhibit links, so finding and entering all those exhibits of sources would take as much time as entering them the first time. And before entering them in the new program, I can organize them a bit better. And if I did an export/import, I would have to first find all the people still in the file that we are really not related to, especially in the Chapman line.

I’m not sure there is another program that can seemlessly take all my data and exhibits and create a website, like TMG and its plug-in Second Site, which is what I use to create the family tree part. I still want to keep all that data and supporting source exhibits available to everyone in the family, but I also want to keep the rest of the background-type information that I’ve been putting on these WordPress pages.

Whatever program I end up with, the tree will have a lot fewer people in it then, mostly because of removing those non-family Chapmans. I have also added in unrelated people, or maybe peripherally-related is a better word. These are people I add in as I am actively researching, to try to keep track of similar people and families in the same area, so I can make sure I’m tracing the right people and not someone else with the same name. I need to remove those people too, now that I have determined they are not related.

Anyway, I have found William Chapman’s family (who married Sarah Jane Allen), his parents and 13 siblings. This information is mostly from online indexes, but the actual church register images are not online yet, they are only on microfilm, and unfortunately the film is not at the local FHC here in Mesa. I’m getting all the data together so it will all be handy when I rent the film, have it sent to the FHC here, and go scroll through the film. Should be fun (not). I thought that I was going to have to do that for the Hungarian records for Pósa, but a few years ago they put those records online so it’s much nicer to look through the records in the comfort of my own home. At least the microfilm I have to scroll through at the FHC is in English! But the nice part about the Hungarian records is that women kept their name throughout their lives in the church records, makes it much easier to find the women.

I will be adding the Chapman info I know so far to the Chapman page soon (I actually made a new William Chapman page), but remember that I still need to verify the data with the actual church registers. And we’ll see how far back I can get 🙂

Also–forgot to mention, some free records at ancestry.com this weekend. I didn’t look into it so I’m not sure exactly which records are free, but it looks like international records. So if you don’t have a subscription, or only a subscription for US records, now’s your chance to see if a world subscription might be worthwhile for you.

I have put online what I have found so far about Pósa. This includes the pedigrees of Lena’s parents, and images of the parish registers where I found the information. There is a bit of other information, some maps, things like that. I finally decided that there was enough information about Lena (parent names, birthplace) that I could devote some time to trying to find the records, so that’s what I have done in my spare time for the past month or so.

Now after all that research and then spending a week uploading files and fiddling with HTML, I’m ready for a break, so I will probably not do any more work on this line for awhile. It has been fun, though. I love a good mystery!

I put all the information together on one page, with links to supporting exhibits and information. To see the pedigrees, click the name Mária Pósa or Lajos Pósa under the purple heading “Lajos Pósa and Mária Pósa”.