Geneology Question?

[FantasticDisFamily]

Ok, for those of you who may be more into this hobby than DH & I are this time (yes, I know TOO many hobbies) I have a question.

DH's paternal Great-grandfather. We know he died in one part of Michigan, but can only find census records of him born in Detroit area. The 1880 census has him living at home, although married and wife's name is right as is age. Also his mother and father's names match other family info we have. The problem is that they simply disappear after that! He died in 1917 but we can't find him on 1900 or 1910.

So the question is, was it fairly common for census records in rural areas to be somewhat shall we say sporadic? We do have a record on the Mormon geneology site that shows DH's grandfather with this father and back into the other records we know for sure. The problem is that great granddaddy had a fairly common name - William.

Also, would you consider those things to be definitive enough or would you actually go into the courthouse in the county he died and try to find an actual document making the link?

TIA!
Deb

 

[piratesmate]

I've been doing genealogy research for quite a while. In the beginning, I believed things to be accurate that weren't & ended up with some really bizarre information.

With the LDS (Mormon) site you need to be careful. Some of their info is posted by members - that is, just other people doing research. Not that they'd intentionally post false info, but some of them have made the same mistakes the rest of us have.

I joined Ancestry.com and did quite a bit of research online before ever venturing out to the county archives. If you can, I'd try to gather a bunch of info before heading to your archives. Some counties are well organized & others....well, if you don't have as much info as possible it will be hard to find anything.

Check to see what Michigan required for record keeping before heading out. In PA, the counties kept records starting around 1896 and the state didn't require records of births/deaths until 1906. For anything prior to 1896, we have to depend on church records.

As for the census, I believe the old records are better than the 1990 census. (I worked on that one & believe me, not everyone did their job correctly!) However, there was often a language/accent barrier between the enumerator & the citizens. Mistakes were made, but the info should be there.

Good luck!