Moores in 1915, driving me crazy

One of the things I’m doing is trying to find my Moore families in the New York state censuses. It’s not easy because of their commonly used names, but it’s fun looking anyway. I had found William H Moore Jr in 1915 at his usual address in Queens. In 1920, he lives at the same address, but in Brooklyn not Queens. I checked the map at the time and when I did, I completely understood!

47 Crosby Avenue in Google Earth
47 Crosby Avenue in Google Earth

The green line you see is the county line. It separates Kings County (Brooklyn) from Queens County. No doubt that border moved itself a bit before finally settling where it is now. Fun fact: That big green area is  The Evergreens Cemetery where the Moore family is buried.

1915 census of New York State, Queens County, New York. Evergreen town, New York City AD 03, ED 36, p. 052 (penned), William H Moore; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com).
1915 census of New York State, Queens County, New York. Evergreen town, New York City AD 03, ED 36, p. 052 (penned), William H Moore; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com).

The above image shows where I had found William Jr‘s family in Queens in 1915. Just where I knew they would be, living at 47 Crosby Avenue.

This week I was working in Family Tree Maker. Making everything neat and tidy. Really just working on what I can without all my files, since I’m still waiting on the new computer. Imagine my surprise when a little green leaf showed me something a little surprising and informative!

1915 census of New York State, Kings County, New York. Brooklyn AD 22, ED 23, p. 053 (penned), Wm Henry Moore; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com).
1915 census of New York State, Kings County, New York. Brooklyn AD 22, ED 23, p. 053 (penned), Wm Henry Moore; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com).

William Jr‘s family was enumerated twice! This isn’t the first time this has happened to someone in my tree. It is the first time I’ve gotten extra information though, which is awesome. This one finally, finally, finally, suggests something I suspected, that the H in both William’s names stands for Henry. It also led me to William Jr‘s brother and business partner John. He is about 5 households up the street in this census.

Bill worked late for Sharkey

Just that small sentence shouldn’t mean much to anyone other than a genealogist. To a genealogist it’s a clue into the life of an ancestor. For me, it wouldn’t have meant much without the document I am about to share with you. Before this document, I would have noted that my great-grandpa William L Moore once worked for a Mr. Sharkey but that would have been it. With the document I have though, I know that Mr. Sharkey must have been more than an employer. He was most likely a very supportive mentor and friend.

I first shared this resume in 2010, but now that I’ve spent this long transcribing Llewellyn’s diary, this document has a much richer meaning. It might be hard to see in the gallery format, so feel free to click over to the original shared images here.

What the resume shows is that in July of 1922, when William was just 20 years old, he started working for H.W. Sharkey, C.P.A. as an Assistant Stenographer. This is a big deal because what we know without looking at the resume is that my Great-Grandpa spent over 30 years working for AT&T as an accountant. Unfortunately, the resume also shows that there just wasn’t enough work to keep my Great-Grandpa on and in December of 1923 he left. Great-Grandpa spent about two weeks working as a bookkeeper for the British International Corporation before he went back to work for H.W. Sharkey & Co. This time as a Semi-Senior Accountant or Assitant, I can’t tell. What I do know is he got himself a $5 raise! He must have proven by leaving that he was vital to the business!

The resume says that my Great-Grandpa was only with H.W. Sharkey & Co. for four months before leaving in April of 1924. You and I know differently though because on February 16, 1925, he worked late for Sharkey. I would say that it was an error on the resume, but I know my Great-Grandpa’s record keeping skills. That just wouldn’t happen. So I choose to believe he worked for Sharkey while he went to the Excelsior Business School (see what I did there using the resume!). Then on May 15, 1925 he finally went to work where he would stay for the rest of his professional career, AT&T. Which is where I am 100% positive he was when this series of pictures was taken.

 

William H Moore Jr and his wife, where did they go?

William H Moore's Family (click for full size)
William H Moore’s Family (click for full size)

William H Moore Jr is the brother of my 2nd great grandfather. He was also one half of Moore Brothers Publishing. Sometime between 1920 and 1930, William moved his family to Belleville, New Jersey which is only a short distance from where his father and brother eventually settled in Caldwell.

1930 U.S. census, population schedule, NARA microfilm publication T626, roll 1327. Essex County, New Jersey. Belleville township, ED 316, sheet 03-A, dwelling 45, family 58, William H Moore; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com).
1930 U.S. census, population schedule, NARA microfilm publication T626, roll 1327. Essex County, New Jersey. Belleville township, ED 316, sheet 03-A, dwelling 45, family 58, William H Moore; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com).

In the 1930 census, William was living at 72 Bell Street.

1940 U.S. census, population schedule, NARA microfilm publication T627, roll 2330. Essex County, New Jersey. Belleville township, ED 016, sheet 11-A, family 233, Alice Moore; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com).
1940 U.S. census, population schedule, NARA microfilm publication T627, roll 2330. Essex County, New Jersey. Belleville township, ED 016, sheet 11-A, family 233, Alice Moore; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com).

In 1940, him and his wife were nowhere to be found and his daughters were living in the house on Bell Street with their maternal Aunt.

This begs the question, did something happen to William and his wife? Were they just traveling? I don’t know yet, but I mean to find out!

I’m Home Again

Whew, that was quite a trip I took. We started out in Avoca, New York. The site of our annual family reunion. Only, this year the 4th of July was on a Wednesday and it was very confusing to the planning of the festivities. So, it ended up being just us visiting with the New York branch (with a little South Carolina thrown in!). ha. We stayed overnight. On our way to visit my Aunt Barb in PA, we visited Aunt Diane and Grandma Moore in the cemetery. This was my first time up to New York since Diane’s funeral, so it was an emotional visit.

Valley View Cemetery; Avoca, NY
Valley View Cemetery; Avoca, NY

We spent the evening with Barb, and headed into New Jersey to find a hotel. We had some time the next morning before my Aunt Lori got off work. I was actually very grateful because this was the first time I had been in Caldwell without any time constraints. We could tool around as quick or slow as we liked. We started off needing breakfast, so we ate at the Caldwell Diner. It just so happens the Caldwell Diner is right next to the site of the old Thorward Meat Market. So while I had the Caldwell Special, I had a perfect view of the meat market building!

Bloomfield Avenue; Caldwell, NJ (2012)
Old Meat Market; Caldwell, NJ (2012)
Bloomfield Avenue; Caldwell, NJ (?)
Thorward & Van Duyne Market; Caldwell, NJ (?)

I only wish I knew the exact years that the meat market was in business. While Grandpa Moore was alive, he told me a couple stories about it. He wasn’t very good with dates though, so I’m left to try and reason that out myself. I do have a newspaper clipping about the market, the only problem being it doesn’t have a date. (I previously wrote about the Market as my very first entry on the blog!)

Market Celebrates 25th Anniversary

Thorward and Van Duyne’s Market, Caldwell, is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary this week.

The market, the first in Caldwell, was established in 1856 by Frank Dobbins, who later sold the business to George H. Vanderhoof. After a few years the market was operated under the name of Vanderhoof and Wilton until twenty-five years ago when Thorward and Van Duyne took it over.

Lewis Thorward, a partner in the business, has been in the store for forty-two years. The market has Caldwell’s No. 1 telephone.

After eating at Caldwell Diner, we went by a lot of the old homesteads. I got pictures of a few, but because traffic was so heavy, it was hard to get pictures most of the time. I will admit, the heat kept me in an air conditioned car. We’ll still be going back to visit more thoroughly, I stopped briefly at the West Caldwell Library but that was all the “research” I got in. I did find an awesome book with pictures of Historic Caldwell. I liked the book so much I ordered my own copy off Amazon!

Thorward's Diner
Thorward’s Diner
Remembering the Caldwells by John J Collins
Remembering the Caldwells by John J Collins

Next time I’m in Caldwell, I hope to visit the Methodist Church that Llewellyn is always mentioning in her diary and maybe a few more libraries to see what they have.

New Goals for 2012

After the very emotional 2 weeks I’ve had, I’m sitting down now to re-assess my situation. It’s been very hard adjusting to my “new normal”. So much of my day is just empty now. That means I’ve got to find other ways to fill it. So here’s some additional goals for myself in addition to my 2012 Genealogy Goals.

  1. Blog Re-Design. Boy did I drop the ball on this one so far. It’s such a cop out to say, “I’ve been busy.” It’s what I have though. Now that Grandpa isn’t here for me to care for, I have to dedicate myself back to my website. It’s part of my genealogy passion and now I need to re-discover it. There are a couple of questions I’ve gotten in the last few weeks about this, so I’ll try and address those as soon as I can formulate educated, accurate responses. Remember I’m not a coder by trade, just by self learning! So I don’t want to lead you wrong. Part of my re-design is also to overhaul my tags and categories on the blog. I’ve racked up quite a bit of content here, so I just want to be able to access it better. Hopefully a new organization method and the new design can work together to do this.
  2. Quilting is something I discovered the year before Grandpa moved here and just like my website, I found it hard to find time to do it. So while I still have a lot of household responsibilities that take up my time, I’m hoping to work out a way to make some quilts for sale (a new venture for me!) and get my website time in. Grandpa had even given me a tremendous idea the day before he passed away and I really want to make that happen.
  3. Exercising. This one is the toughest. I’ve been averaging about 3 days a week since the end of January on the treadmill. I want to get it to 5 days a week until my weight comes down. I gained a little bit back the last two weeks, so I have to make up for that by being extra diligent. I’m hoping to get this done first thing in the morning before everything else steamrolls on me, so that I won’t have any excuses to back out!
  4. Organizing. I’m actually planning a re-organization of my whole life if you get down to it. Everything from how I spend my time and money to my work area. I’ve planned a renovation for my work space to hopefully make it more efficient. I even have my Dad custom building the desk/bookcases. So plenty of room for my genealogy and coding books! Finally!
  5. COMMUNICATION. This is the biggest improvement I hope to make. To be quite honest, I had been pulling away from the computer the last few months. I don’t know if I subconsciously had a feeling that I didn’t have much time left with Grandpa, or I didn’t notice how his condition was getting worse because I was so close to it. Whatever the reason or purpose, it happened. I got behind on e-mails and commenting back. I sincerely apologize for that. Part of my new methods will be to keep a calendar (in my Genealogy Binder maybe), of my month so that I have days set aside just for taking care of correspondence. It’s such a huge part of genealogy and I miss it! There are tons of family connections I want to make in the coming months! So expect me to try and be on the website more and on Twitter. I’m still not sure about maintaining a FaceBook. I cut a lot of drama out of my life when I de-activated that, so I’m still trying to decide what’s best there.

I know these are not all related to genealogy but since I plan to spend so much time on here in the future, I want to get my goals down where they’ll be easy for me to find and re-visit. Not to mention the sign I plan to make myself and hang above my new desk (when it’s made that is).

Now I’m going to share some Instagram pictures I post to my Twitter this week when I was feeling pretty emotional about Grandpa. These picture were taken with my phone, so that is why they look a bit tilted.

Proof I’m not the first Genealogist in the Family

For years I’ve suspected that my Great Grandmother, Llewellyn Thorward-Moore, was researching her family history. I’ve come to that conclusion because of the notes and papers she left behind. This week, I’m starting to go through some of Grandpa’s final papers. These are the ones he kept with him. In those papers, I found some pretty cool evidence that I’m not the first one in the Moore family to be obsessed with tracing our roots. I only wonder how far they got and if there are any other surprises to find one day.

click for full size
click for full size

This record transcription is dated September 9, 1942 and it has a raised seal from the county clerk of Kings County, New York. I know that Grandpa always said his father couldn’t locate a copy of his birth certificate because of a fire and therefore was unable to volunteer as an air raid warden during WWII. (I actually think it was because it was under his middle name of Lawrence, instead of his first name of William.)

Did William secure a raised seal of this as an alternative form of birth record? Did William and Llewellyn secure this as a genealogical record? I guess we’ll never know. I just know that I know exactly where I get my record hunting love from now.

click for full size

Just for fun, here’s the original census page from 1905.

William Thorward Moore, 1930-2012

Every weekday for the past year, I’ve woken up, cooked Grandpa breakfast, and we’ve watched the news or Today Show together. This morning I’m not doing that. It’s hitting me harder then I thought it would but I have to remember Grandpa’s favorite thing to say when he was having a hard time.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

 

Making some Observations

I worked quite a bit yesterday on my maternal lines. The only drawback is it burned me out a little bit on researching. So I decided to switch to my paternal line, and just kind of observe it in pedigree format in FTM2012.

click for full size

Here are some things I’ve noticed:

  1. Josephine Doremus is the only one of my 3rd great grandparents that wasn’t an immigrant.  All others that are listed were born in other countries
  2. The missing spots in my 3rd great grandparents aren’t immigrants… at least I don’t think. I have possible parents for both Jennie Featherson and Sarah/Sadie Sutcliffe, just no paper trail yet.
  3. My Moore line is completely Irish.
  4. My Thorward line is a quarter German, a quarter ?, and half Scottish.
  5. My Redford line  is half English and half ?.
  6. My Parkin line is half English and half ?.
  7. All the known immigrant ancestors on my paternal line were all here before 1875.
  8. This entry has been sitting idle for 45 minutes because I’m watching Ugly Betty on Netflix Streaming.
  9. I probably shouldn’t “work” in a room with a TV, much less one with Instant Streaming capabilities.
  10. Featherson and Sutcliffe don’t sound like normal names. They’re not exactly Thorward, if you get my drift, but they aren’t Moore or Johnson either.

What I Learned Today

Okay it’s time for another lesson learned by me! Actually I think it’s two lessons learned in the grand scheme of learning.

I started off on The Evergreens Cemetery website. I wanted to see if their database was updated enough to include some of my Moores.

I’m using the information that was handwritten on the back of this cemetery deed. I actually have two deeds to this cemetery lot. One is the original from 1896 when William H Moore‘s wife passed away. The next is when ownership of the deed transferred to Mary J Moore, William’s daughter in 1928. The handwritten notes are on Mary’s copy of the deed.

It was when I finally found Mary’s record, that I came to my first lesson learned. I had assumed that whoever wrote the notes on the back of the deed, had written the dates down as death dates. That was where I went wrong. What I think is that whoever wrote the notes (my great grandparents most likely), went to the cemetery, and got the information from them. Now I know, that the cemetery lists Mary Jane Moore‘s (first mention of her middle name too!) burial date as May 21, 1940. This happens to be the same date written on the back of the deed.

Lesson 1: Don’t assume anything about dates written down by another person.

Lesson 2: Cemeteries are in the market of knowing BURIAL dates, not death dates.

Okay, so I learned three lessons. After realizing my mistake today, I had an epiphany. I was always blessed when other localities would look for my records in the whole month. Obviously, they knew subconsciously that I’m not good with dates.

Lesson 3: Repositories are not required (rightly so), to do your research for you. Therefore, if you give them an exact date. They’re only going to look for that exact date. If they are nice enough to search the whole month, then you’re very lucky. If you’re not sure about the date your are requesting for your record and you’re not doing the searching yourself; then I would say it’s okay to go ahead and be vague about the date of the record. Not every place requires an exact date. Most just require a month and year.

If I had learned these lessons when sending away to New Jersey for my vital records, I might have actually gotten records in return for my money. Instead, my William H Moore request came back to me, unfound, because unbeknownst to me, I sent away for the date of his burial, and not his death. Oops!

How I found William Moore in 1875

After looking over my timeline of William H Moore, I became determined to check Brooklyn in the 1875 New York State Census. For me, finding William in 1875 would be a big help. This way I would be able to tell whether he had made it back from Chicago yet. I didn’t like having that huge gap between 1871 and 1880.

The first thing I did was check the Brooklyn city directory for 1875. I figured if I could find William at one of his usual addresses, then my job would be that much easier!

Analysis:

  1. There are two William H Moores in the directory. One is a basketmaker and the other a carpenter. The carpenter makes me happy, but I don’t recognize the address, so it’s going down as my first possibility.
  2. There are 3 other carpenters that are just listed as William Moore. I’ve added them to the list under the other William H Moores. If I find the other two, and still haven’t found my William, then I’ll check them.

My next step was to plot the first William H Moore into Google Earth to see where exactly he was located in 1875. From there I can see how far he was from the later addresses I’ve documented for William’s family.

It might be a little hard to tell in the scaled down version, but Stockton Street is not far at all from William H Moore‘s 1880-1886 address.

My next step was to find out where to start. FamilySearch has the 1875 New York State Census, but not an index. There is a website that has a great list of the 1876 Election Districts of Brooklyn.

Now the hard part comes. I have a little clue in the fact that I have never found William H Moore in a Ward under 20. So I decided to start at the highest ward numbers and work my way backwards.

Ward 25, District 4, doesn’t exactly work. I used the polygon tool in Google Earth to see the area covered by each district. The red thumb tack is where the William H Moore in the city directory is located. With this, I know I can probably jump to another ward, and check to see if that’s a little closer to where I need to be.

So I looked around where I want to find William in the census, and tried to find a boundary street in the district listings that matched. I hit pay dirt in the 21st ward. All the districts in the 21st ward have boundary street combinations of Lafayette Avenue, Nostrand Ave, and Myrtle Avenue.

Jackpot! This is the 21st Ward, District 6. While it took a little while to plot the different districts. I was able to keep them plotted and turned off in Google Earth in case I needed to check them for the other William Moores.

As it turns out, I won’t need to because this is in fact my William on Stockton Street. So I’m now able to confirm another address for William between 1870 and 1880. I also know that his family made the trek between Chicago and Brooklyn sometime between 1871 and 1875. Despite what it says on the census, the three boys were all born in Illinois.

So this is how I found my William H Moore in 1875 without an index to search!