Census Research Update

Back in August I wrote about extracting census data in an effort to learn more about my great, great grandfather, John Washington Womble.  As a correction to the previous post, the Civil Districts I extracted the census data from were the 12th and 13th from the 1870 census and then the 11th Civil District from the 1880 census.  I’m curious to learn where exactly in Hardeman County, Tennessee he lived and anything else this information can tell me about his life there.

This has been a long process and I’m not finished yet, and probably haven’t even reached the tip of the iceberg.  I spent the fall going through deed indices; yes some may say that wasn’t truly a great starting point because indices don’t always contain a thorough listing of everyone in a particular book.  However, I needed a place to start and knew going in that I would need to consult the deed books themselves to truly cover all of my bases.

I even ordered a roll of microfilm of surveys for Hardeman and made several copies of surveys that were located either entirely or partially in Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10th Surveyor’s District.  This was the limit I set for what I would search in an effort to learn where his land was located, and yes I know I’m leaving out the 13th Civil District—I will cover that.

After collecting this information, which I knew wasn’t enough, I began to plat out the surveys I’d copied.  I tried using a free online program and considered purchasing an expensive program to help me plat all of these surveys.  Instead, I took the hard road and platted them by hand using graph paper, ruler, pencil, and at times a protractor when necessary.

This was time consuming, but interesting because I became drawn into what I believe may be the terrain of his neighborhood.  My thought is that John Washington Womble likely lived in the vicinity of the Hatchie River.  I could be wrong; as I haven’t finished platting all of the surveys I collected and haven’t finished my search of the properties that surrounded his.

I tried comparing my plats to the present day Hardeman County, Tennessee on Googlemaps, but still could never completely connect them enough to tie the plats with the images I found online.

While creating the plats, I found mention of a property that always seemed to be referred to in similar with sometimes varying terms:  Entry No. 953, for 2000 acres, in the name of Thomas Claiborn & others.  I first noticed this description in a land transfer from Aby Grantham to John J Womble.

The last name Claiborne is significant because it may be connected to John Washington Womble’s 2nd wife Rhoda Caroline Richardson.  Additionally, some of the property description of the land purchased by John J Womble seemed to mirror a neighboring property that coincidentally was owned by John Washington Womble, who I believe, was John J. Womble’s uncle.

I had the opportunity to visit the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah this past February when I worked the NGS booth at the RootsTech/FGS conference.  There I did a page by page search through deed book W looking for land transactions that were in the area I’d cordoned off in my mind-Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10th Surveyor’s District.  Again I saw mentioned in various deeds the infamous, Entry No. 953, for 2000 acres, in the name of Thomas Claiborn & others and made copies of those.  Hopefully, I can use that plat as an anchor in which to join all the other “puzzle pieces” of plats that I’ve already created or will create and be able to fit John Washington Womble’s plat in amongst them.

Upon returning to Virginia, I’ve ordered microfilm from the FHL of deed books W and X and once it arrives plan to continue my page by page search for properties within Civil District 12, range 1, section 2 of the 10th Surveyor’s District.

My plan is that once I’ve gathered together those plats for the Civil District 12 that I’ll then work on locating plats for the 13th Civil District and then be able to put John Washington Womble’s 1870’s neighborhood together.

Census! Census! Census!

Back in May I watched a genealogy lecture where the speaker encouraged the audience, including me, to research our ancestor’s neighborhood.  I’ve heard this many times and have written posts about the FAN club principle for this very blog.  In my genealogical research I’ve tried to learn more about John Washington Womble’s life in Tennessee and understand more as to why he left Hardeman County, moved to Nashville, and then returned to Hardeman about a year later.

I had studied before the 1870 and 1880 Hardeman County, TN census records for his household, in addition to the households of some of his children, and nephew in an effort to answer my questions.  However, I wasn’t able to learn much else that was new information.

After watching that genealogy lecture, I remembered a genealogy class assignment where I had to analyze the data of 100 people each in two different census years in an area where one of my ancestors lived.  I had really enjoyed the assignment, and decided to do something similar.  However, since John Washington Womble lived in different civil districts in 1870 and 1880, that evidence told me that he likely moved to a completely different area in the county than the one that he lived in when he left in 1873.  I felt that it would be a good idea to extract the census data from the civil district that he moved to in 1870 and 1880 in order to learn more about the neighborhood into which he moved to.

I then downloaded each of the census pages for the 11^th civil district for the census years 1870 and 1880 and created spreadsheets for each year.  Then, I began going through the pages and extracting the names, ages, race, and occupation, etc. for each resident of that district.  It was a pretty long process and not very exciting, but I felt that I discovered some clues as to why John Washington Womble moved back there when he left Nashville and perhaps even why he moved there in the first place after the Civil War.

As I extracted the data, I did come across some problems with my plan.  A few pages of the 1880 census that I was extracting data from had parts of the pages damaged.  So, I didn’t have complete information on all of the residents in that district.  I tried viewing the records using different census record providers to see if perhaps I could find undamaged records.  However I wasn’t fortunate, and decided to just leave out that information since it wasn’t available and continued extracting. 

I’m still in the process of crunching the census data for both years, but will post again if I make any new discoveries. 

Further Forays into the Social Networking Universe

In a previous post, I talked about my goal of joining various hobby oriented social networks that interest me. I spent several hours during one weekend joining those groups and here are my reviews and comments of those sites.

The first hobby oriented social network I joined was Ravelry. This is a social network for people who either knit or crochet. So far, I haven't been able to find anything to really criticize about the site. Other than while their photo uploading function is wonderful, and even includes a cool centering feature, please make sure the photo you upload is oriented the correct way. The reason is, because unlike with Facebook, which allows you to rotate the photos you've uploaded, Ravelry doesn't.

Ravelry also contains a fabulous notebook for you to use. The notebook is where you can store photos of yarn that are in your stash, which is definitely something that any knitter has. Needles and crochet hooks can be kept track of in the notebook, as well as projects you're currently working on or are planning to start. The project function in the notebook is great because again you can add photos, update your progress, make comments, and share this project with others on Ravelry . In the project function, you can include all information you could think of that would pertain to working a particular project. There is a space to indicate the type of yarn and where you bought it from and it's cost, needle size, gauge, and size that the item will be made in. The list goes on.

Then there's the multitude of groups on Ravelry . I think I joined about 3 on my first visit. The groups are wonderful and at least with my experience have given me the opportunity to get together with the group's members in person, which I feel is most important with social networks. Why join a social network if you're not planning on conversing with actual people and especially in person?!

The next social network I joined was Stitcherie. I have done needlework since grade school. This is a social network for; you guessed it, people who do cross-stitch or needlepoint. The site's purpose may also apply to other types of threaded needlework such as crewel embroidery-I'm not sure.

My main gripe with the site is that the registration process isn't compatible with the Opera browser I use. Once I switched browsers everything worked fine, but as with anything that's not compatible with Opera; it irritated me.

On Stitcherie , I can't add my future projects or add items in my stash to my page, either. What I can do is upload pics of my projects and in the captions section of these images include pertinent information on these projects.

It doesn't make sense to me about the lack of a stash function or future/current projects function on this site, since like knitters; people who do any kind of embroidery have a stash. Hopefully, the powers that be on the site will read my post and add that as a function.

The site only has six groups and none of these were groups in my area.  I had been hoping to find a group of cross-stitchers or at least people who did embroidery so we could stitch together, but no.  Maybe I should try starting one?

The upside of the Stitcherie is that not too long after posting pictures of my finished projects, I had received many wonderful compliments on my needlework skills. So, I do think that's definitely a bonus that the people are so friendly. No one can complain about an ego boost.

Another hobby of mine is miniatures. This is a hobby that I've been interested in since I was 12. At one time, I even worked in a dollhouse shop. The next network I joined was the mini nook, which is devoted to the world of miniatures.

I didn't see any groups on this site, so that kind of stunk.  However, if the function is there I should at least start one.


The downsides to this site are similar to those with Stitcherie and even Ravelry in regards to adding photos. The pictures can't be centered and/or rotated once they've been added to the site. Also when you upload the images into an album, you need to take care to only add pictures that are a certain file size. Pictures that are too large will not be added to your album, and this is not made clear immediately. The reason being is that if you're anything like me when uploading pictures, I tend to click the upload button and then go off and do something else. Instead of sitting and watching the site upload my picture(s). Several times I saw a sentence flash across the screen. However, I wasn't paying attention, and then wondered, why aren't all of the pics I uploaded in my album? It took a couple of times of going through the uploading process of these pictures with huge file sizes for me to finally realize why they weren't being added.

A further gripe with the album function on this site is that the order of the images in the albums can't be changed, so you need to be very careful when you chose the order in which to add any images to an album. I added two albums of the same house project and then finally realized afterwards that I should have added them in reverse order because I couldn't change their order once they were uploaded.

The next social network I joined was Genealogy Wise. The site is devoted to people interested in genealogy. This social network had a bit more convoluted registration process. I was able to create an account on the site, but was unable to do anything with it for the better part of a day. This was even after confirming my email address. The reason being was that the powers that be on the site needed to approve my membership.

I have a funny gripe with this site's photo adding and manipulation function. After adding my profile picture, I found that the top part of my head was clipped off. This made me appear to have been hit on the head with an anvil. I tried to adjust the centering and the size of the photo I added, but to no avail. Finally I tried another solution, I added another picture of myself and thankfully wasn't stricken with the head clipping 'feature'.

Unfortunately, unless more functions are added to this social network, I don't see its usefulness to me. I had joined the network thinking that I would be able to upload some of the genealogical data I've collected. Maybe even upload family groups to the site that would be visible to people researching that surname? However, the only useful function I've found is creating a group, which was one of the first things I did. I created a Womble surname group, so if you happen to be researching that family please stop by and join my Genealogy Wise group.

An interesting note is that I did receive a comment from a Genealogy Wise member. I should probably follow up on this because you never know who might know someone or something that could help in furthering your genealogical research.

Google+  is a new social network and is still in it's beta stage.  I was able to join this after finagling an invite from a high school friend.  I tried looking up various people I knew, but so far my only contact is my high school friend.  At my knitting group, it was suggested that I look for the knitters that are using it.  So I definitely have to give that a try!