Carved in Stone

When you're looking for information on your ancestors you will  find it in many places. Most of us have been to cemeteries and noticed that the headstones usually have a name, date of birth and date of death. You may think that everything on the headstone is correct, but that is not always the case. 

This is my great grandmother's headstone. The first thing you notice is her name. You might think that her maiden name was Mitchell or maybe that was her middle name. In fact, her full maiden name was Nevada Nebraska COURTNEY. Mitchell was the last name of her first husband, Charlie Marshall MITCHELL. He was the father of my grandmother. Nevada's second husband was John HUMPHRIES. It seems odd to me that both married names were included on the headstone, but because some of her children were Mitchells and some were Humphries, they decided to include both so no one's feelings would be hurt. 

Then I found her listed on the 1880 US census. It was dated June 15, 1880. Notice the daughter in this family named "Infant" who is 6/12 of age born in December? That means this child was six months old. That's her! That's Nevada! So she was actually born in December of 1879, not 1880 as carved in stone. There were no birth certificates back then so the best record in this case is the census. Unless she had a sister that died as a child I'm going with my gut and saying Infant = Nevada.

James COURTNEY and Lavonia HAWKINS were my great great grandparents and I assume Infant was my great grandmother, Nevada.

To explain a little about what's going on in this census record, this was a blended family - some yours, mine, and ours children. Both the husband and wife had been married before and had children with other spouses, and then had children together. The first column has the individuals' names. The next column is for Race. W = White. The next column is for Gender. M = Male, F = Female. Next is age. Jas (abbreviation for James) is 49, Lavonia is 30. The last column shown here shows the relationship to the head of household. In this case James is the head of household and Lavonia is his wife. The three oldest children were for James, but not Lavonia. They were too old to be hers. The next three children are for both James and Lavonia. The last two children are Lavonia's from a previous marriage. Notice that they have a different last name (McMahan) and in the relationship column is states they are step-daughters to the head of household and they are in between the ages of the oldest three and youngest three children. 

This is one of the most confusing families that I've come across in my tree, but it finally all made sense when I realized what was going on. Look at it until it makes sense to you. You may come across some even more confusing than this in your search. There is a lot more information on the census form than this clipping shows that I will explain in more details on a future post. 

If you have any questions about this post or if you have or need more information about the family shown here please contact me at cajungenealogist@gmail.com.