Saturday, February 21, 2015

I just discovered a new fact about my great grandparents

During my recent visit to the Family Discovery Center in Salt Lake City I realized how important it is for me to upload photos, stories and source records to the individuals on my Family Tree if I can. One of the displays lets us touch a button to bring up a photo, and any information available for that individual is shown on the huge screen. It can put me to shame if I have that information and yet nothing shows up due to my failure to share it on the site. 

At this display I touched my maternal great grandfather's photo and this profile came up that includes photos. But you can see under 'Stories' that it says 'No stories available'. I need to get busy. 

This afternoon I reviewed my research on my paternal great grandparents, George "Jacob" and Mary Katherine (Winter) Margheim. This is the family I was looking at.
My grandfather John Ludwig Margheim is the youngest boy
between his parents in the front row. 
Until two years ago I thought this was the entire family unit. As I was searching Find-A-Grave I learned that an infant son Heinrich (Henry) was also born to this family (6 Aug 1891-8 Jun 1892). 

Today I looked at the 1910 Census for this family.

For the first time, I noticed that it says that my great grandmother Mary (Katherine or "Katie") had 12 children, with only 9 living in 1910. My genealogy database shows this family unit:
I do have baby Henry listed, but evidently Katie had two more children that I have never known about. I'll bet one was born while the family was still living in Russia, between 1883 and 1886, and perhaps one was born between 1887 and 1891. Oh dear, will I ever know? 

Here's the 1895 Census for this family:
This shows daughter Lena age 5. In the 1910 census above she is age 20. So she might have been born in 1890. However, I got her birth date of 7 May 1883 from the family Bible. A second "Oh dear". 

You might notice in the 1910 census above that the son age 17 is listed as "Samuel". I do know there was no Samuel in the family. That has to be Jacob Alexander "Alex", who is age 3 in the 1895 census (born 12 Dec 1892). The third "Oh dear!"  

I'm surprised that I hadn't noticed these details before. This proves that we need to go back and review our source documents. We just never know what we might discover.           

4 comments:

Jana Iverson Last said...

Becky,

I want to let you know that your blog post is listed in today's Fab Finds post at http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2015/02/follow-friday-fab-finds-for-february-27.html

Have a great weekend!

Becky Thompson said...

Thank you, Jana. I'm honored.

Miriam Robbins said...

Hi, Becky,

I just wanted to let you know that this post was featured on my "Friday Finds and Follows" post at my blog, AnceStories: The Stories of My Ancestors.

Becky Thompson said...

Thank you so much, Miriam! I need to take a look at your other Friday Finds! I appreciate being listed in your featured posts.