Here's an interesting household from the 1880 census:
This is no relation to me, but look at this...from the 1880 Census....in Flint, Michigan....notice the girl Jenny Abertheny who is listed as "no relation" to the head of the household. Her occupation? Prostitute.The census says that Jennie was single and George was married, but they may indeed have been
Jenny's husband's occupation? "Miserable loafer." [Link]
Mike Harden's uncle found a way to make ends meet during the Great Depression.
Growing up, I knew only that my namesake Uncle Mike did "something in banks."
At 32, I learned that the "something" involved relieving them of their cash assets. He robbed banks from Hunterstown, Ind., to Washington, Pa. The job in Washington cost him a brother when police interrupted their 1930 escapade. Ed went down as the two tried to shoot their way out of town. Mike lived to rob again and to show up occasionally during the Depression to buy clothes and shoes for my mother and her 12 siblings. [Link]
You can win a day in London with a professional family historian (travel not included) from Your Family Tree by answering this question:
Which of the following is NOT shown on a birth certificate?
[A] The child’s name
[B] The child’s sex
[C] The child’s occupation
Prince Charles' wife Camilla is descended from (gasp!) poor people.
Camilla's granny was obviously so embarrassed about her father's occupation that when she remarried a professional golfer she described herself as the daughter of a shipping merchant. "In fact he'd been working on a factory assembly line - on his death certificate it states his job as 'rubber tyre maker,'" [genealogist Robert] Barrett says.
"My research also shows his father - Camilla's great, great grandfather - was a butler in Paddington who was born in Essex. So she really has good working-class roots." [Link]
Today's "mystery occupation" in the Chicago Sun-Times business section should be a no-brainer.
Where do you work?
In a library, on the Internet, courthouses, archives, cemeteries, attics, basements.
You're a bit like a detective.
I am exactly like a detective.
Do you actually bring the dead to life?Obviously, Tony Burroughs is a web-savvy asbestos-abatement contractor and vampire hunter with supernatural reanimation powers.
I would say yes. [Link]
When they asked me to write my grandmother's obituary this weekend, both my father and his sister insisted that I mention her time working in the "Popeye shop."
The chief industry in our hometown for the past 140 years has been wood turning—first spools, and later dowels and handles for kitchen utensils. But for a time in the 1920s and '30s, the mill produced as a sideline wooden dolls of characters like Popeye and Little Orphan Annie.
My grandmother had the job of threading elastic through and assembling the body parts. The finished dolls were packed in large sacks and carted over to the depot for shipping. She left her job when pregnant with my father in 1940, which was around the time the Popeye shop shut down.These toys are easy to spot today at flea markets and on eBay. Although the pieces were rarely stamped with any identifying mark, it's hard to miss the particular body which, when detached from its limbs and stripped of paint, looks exactly like a spool. The arms, legs, and heads, all made of turned wood, are attached to the hollow spool with an elastic, making the joints strong enough to stand on their own, but also flexible enough to fix in a variety of poses. [Link]
A press release from Ancestry.com reports some of the spooky names found in the US and UK census indexes. The intrepid Kimberly Powell dares to turn it into a learning exercise:
Alla Witch identified in the above mentioned press release is actually "Ella Ulitch." The last name in the 1920 census appears to have been misread - the "Ul" being misidentified as a "W" which is an easy mistake. The Alla for Ella appears to have been misspelling on the part of the census taker. The family's name in the 1910 Census is more easily read as Ulitch, and the Ella's husband is also easily identified as Henry Ulitch on his WWI Draft Registration Card. Entries like this are very common in the census and other genealogical records, and are why we should always try to find more than one source, when possible, to support our facts. [Link]I do like some of the occupations mentioned in the release:
- Professional Wizards: Harbidge Seaman from 1880 U.S. census and Henry Norman, Louis Harty Fowler and Gustave Reticke from the 1881 England census
- The Queen's Magician and Wizard of the Wicked World: John Holden from the 1881 England census
- Witch: Ellen Hannan from 1880 U.S. census
- Witch doctor: Lafayette Springs from 1880 U.S. census
- Hag: Lizzie Isom from 1880 U.S. census
The author of Black Roots: A Beginner's Guide to Tracing the African American Family Tree knows how to leave 'em laughing.
As Tony Burroughs, an African-American genealogy expert from Chicago, ended his seminar at the Main Branch of the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library yesterday, he listed occupations he found on the 1850 U.S. Census.
"Prostitute" and "Pimp" drew chuckles from the audience of almost 70 people.
"Does nothing" elicited outright laughter.
And the audience howled when Mr. Burroughs flashed a Census form on the screen that listed under remarks: "Old hag refused to answer." [Link]
Think your job is bad? The Worst Jobs in History from England's Channel 4 reveals how the unluckiest of our British ancestors paid their bills—and in some cases earned their surnames. I grew up just down the road from some Fullers.
As a fuller, you are expected to walk up and down all day in huge vats of stinking stale urine. The ammonia produced by the rotten wee may make your eyes water, but it creates the softest cloth by drawing out the grease (lanolin) from the wool. If you can dance up to your knees in urine for around two hours per length of cloth, you'll succeed in closing the fibres of the wool and interlocking them to produce cloth that is kind to the skin. You will be doing your part, along with the weavers, dyers and merchants, in making it a world-beating export.
You may stink and regularly have to fight back the urge to throw up, but you are guaranteed very clean toenails. [Link, via Neatorama]
To mark the imminent Labor Day holiday, Ancestry.com has released a list of interesting occupations found in the U.S. and U.K. Census Collections. Here are some highlights:
- Some were more creative in answering census takers' questions. Rather than simply listing "laborer" as their occupation, their occupations were "Sandwich Man," "Soda Dispenser," "Inspector of Lunch," "Collector of Eggs" or "Prepares Fruit"
- The 1880 Census reveals the lure of the "Wild West" during that time period. Almost 30,000 individuals reported their occupation as "Saloon Keeper." There was also a significant number of "Cattle Herders," "Cowboys," "Saddle and Harness Makers," "Horse Dealers," "Street Sweepers" (to clean up the after the horses on the big city streets) and even an "Outlaw" appeared on the census takers list
- Some people showcased their seeming lack of occupation, listing jobs such as "Old Batchelor," "Good Talker," "Reading the Bible," "Bird Fancyier," "Buggy Riding" and "Gent at Large"
Virginia Hooks decided to honor her late husband by memorializing his part-time job.
So she put a picture of a whiskey still and a pair of moonshiners on Billy Joe Hooks' grave marker near Golden Pond, the tiny Trigg County community dubbed "Moonshine Capital of the World."
One of the moonshiners is Hooks, who died in 2004. He was 72.
"He made a little moonshine, but not enough to amount to anything," his widow said. "But he loved the history of it." [Link]
The Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, has one of the best genealogy departments on the planet, so this job they posted on craigslist caught my eye and held it fast.
If you are interested in applying for the Genealogy shelver position, you must have completed the tenth grade and be able to shelve and retrieve materials stored in specific numerical or alphabetical order. Strong physical stamina is needed for standing, walking, stooping, and stretching more than 80% of the work time. [Link]I can do this! I've been putting books on shelves for years, and nobody stoops better than me. Sure, it only pays $7.98 an hour, and the commute from Maine will be a drag, but the free access to Ancestry.com during my lunch break will make it all worthwhile. I just hope my first day doesn't end like this.
Genes Reunited has been looking into the phenomenon of people sharing the same occupation as their ancestors.
In addition to large numbers of people who found they came from a long line of sailors, watchmakers and the like, it found that growing numbers of people were turning to their family trees for evidence of a “grand design” that would give them guidance on what kinds of jobs they are likely to be good at. Of the 3,000 respondents to a survey, 71 per cent said that they had come to their family history to seek out patterns, such as a bias towards a particular occupation or a penchant for a certain talent. [Link]This would explain why Drew Barrymore thinks she can act.
Ancestry.com knows how to make America care about genealogy: dish some ancestral dirt on a Hollywood celebrity like, say, Tom Hanks.
It seems that the multiple Oscar-winning actor may have gotten his droll humor from his grandfather Clarence Frager, who listed his occupation as "squirrel inspector" on his daughter's birth certificate.
Frager got a little more serious when it was time to fill out the 1930 Census. He described his occupation as "rodent control," and we can only imagine that he wasn't talking about rug rats. [Link]
From the UK National Archives:
Census reveals the gossip columnist from 1861
19 May 2005
In vividly describing his neighbours as “bastards”, “prostitutes” and “syphilitic paupers” in the census, Isaac Norris Hunt could almost be depicted as the 1861 version of a gossip columnist.
A data collector for Stow-on-the-World in the 1861 national census, Mr Hunt took a rather overzealous approach into his task of collating information on his fellow Cheltenham residents.
Along with the vigorous observations of I.N Hunt, The National Archives has unveiled the complete name, birthplace and occupation of residents across all 52 counties of England and Wales in 1861. You can trace the lives of ancestors through the five consecutive censuses.
A railway manager by profession, Mr Hunt took the opportunity to add some highly personal remarks when entering the occupation of his neighbours:* Several are listed as prostitutes including Emma Cook aged 19 and the 64-year old Mary NewmanUnsurprisingly, Isaac Hunt does not appear to have undertaken the role of enumerator in any of the later censuses, which are now held at The National Archives.
* Eliza Williams is said to be ‘kept’ by her ‘paramour’ William Clapton
* The unfortunate Hannah Cokey is described as a ‘pauper, syphilitic’
* William Shall was an ‘absconding bankrupt’
* Elizabeth Wixey ‘cohabits with a man’
* and the two young sons of the ‘very doubtful’ Lavinia Collicott are described rather bluntly as ‘bastards’.
