Tuesday, April 03, 2012
The National Archives released the 1940 census yesterday, 72 years after it was taken.
Today I went to the National Archives website and hunted down the records for my parents.
I found my father, listed under his biological father's surname, in Garfield township. His mother had just divorced her first husband (who was living in Traverse City with his parents), and would soon marry the hired man (the neighbors were busy gossiping that the two were having an affair).
Grandmother Alice, her soon-to-be second husband, my father, and my aunt.
Almost all of the neighbors were people who were still living there 30 years later, back when I was a small child.
My mother was living on Washington Street with her parents and brothers. Grandpa was a lineman for Michigan Bell.
My maternal grandparents, my mother, and her three brothers.
The following month, in May, my mother's great aunt Ada Kate Ransom Morton brought three small swatches of cloth and Mummy was allowed to pick one. It had green and white stripes and small hearts of different colors in the white stripes. Grandma sewed my mother a dress from this, but didn't put any pockets on it because she thought my mother would stick her hands in and tear them off the dress. Mummy told me this story as we looked at the census records together.
I found my father, listed under his biological father's surname, in Garfield township. His mother had just divorced her first husband (who was living in Traverse City with his parents), and would soon marry the hired man (the neighbors were busy gossiping that the two were having an affair).
Grandmother Alice, her soon-to-be second husband, my father, and my aunt.
Almost all of the neighbors were people who were still living there 30 years later, back when I was a small child.
My mother was living on Washington Street with her parents and brothers. Grandpa was a lineman for Michigan Bell.
The following month, in May, my mother's great aunt Ada Kate Ransom Morton brought three small swatches of cloth and Mummy was allowed to pick one. It had green and white stripes and small hearts of different colors in the white stripes. Grandma sewed my mother a dress from this, but didn't put any pockets on it because she thought my mother would stick her hands in and tear them off the dress. Mummy told me this story as we looked at the census records together.
