Well, here it is the middle of May and I have fallen behind. Each month I am taking one family line and reviewing what information I have, clean up the binder for that line, and determine what research questions I need to pursue. April was to be the month I devoted to my mother’s family line. That’s the Irish Dougherty line. Unfortunately while this is one of my primary lines, I was traveling a great deal of April and did not get anything accomplished.

Through this process of review in March, I was able to piece together information that shed light on the Clough line that had been overlooked previously. My sister and I each work on our family genealogy. She does the paternal lines and I do the maternal lines. We share our research but we had not previously spent much time really checking each other’s findings, but a second pair of eyes and some times a different style of research will see things differently. That was certainly true in that instance.

The 1850 US census is the first to list every member by name in each house on the day of the census. Unfortunately they do not list their relationship, that came in later census. They did generally try to follow some order. The first name in each household would be the “head” of the household , usually followed by the wife, the children, and the servants and/or boarders listed last. In 1850 the number of family members that live in close proximity to each other was a surprise to me but I quickly have learned to look at not only the people listed on the same page as my ancestor, but also the page immediately before and after.  Sometimes when I have had trouble locating a family member I have looked at the entire township. Of course that comes from having started doing family history back in the day when I would order microfilm at the local family history library and deligently look at the entire film, they were not indexed. The discoveries were more sweet and if you stopped when you found what you were looking for you might need to go back to that same film when you moved on to another family member.

Now the 1850 US census for the William Dougherty family in Pennsylvania, Pike county, Lackawaxen township lists: (name, age, male/female, …)

Wm. L. Dougherty, 36, M,

Jane “, 28, F,

John “, 6, M,

Clark “, 4, M,

William “, 2, M,

So who were these people?  This appears pretty straight forward. Father, mother and children. This is on page 46 . Now go back two pages(page 44) and you will find Jane’s father. (name, age, male/female, color, occupation, property value, place of birth.

John Westfall, 55, M, -, farmer, -, N.J.

William “, 31, M, -, farmer, 1500, “.

Soloman “, 28, M,-, farmer, -, Pa

Gabriel “, 22, M,-, student, -, ”

Maria “, 21, F, -, -, “

John “, 17, M, -, farmer, -, ”

Mary B. “, 14, F, -,-,-, ”

Amelia A. “, 24, F, -,-,-, ”

Franklin “, 10/12, M, -,-,-, ”

Joseph Petton, 18, M, -, laborer, -, ”

Hester Allwood, 17, F, -,-,-, N.Y.

Briton Falley, 26, M, -, laborer, -, Ireland

Martin Lawless, 32, M,-, “, -, ”

John Martin, 36,M,-, “, -, ”

Michael Quime, 34, M,-, “, -, ”

Steph Hine, 30, M,-, “, -, ”

James Rock, 20, M,-, “, -, ”

John Calley, 20, M,-, “, -, ”

Michael Lafters, 22, M,-, “, -, ”

John Neal, 23, M,-, “, -, ”

James Conner, 25, M,-, “, -, ”

James Gray, 26, M,-, “, -, ”

(continuing on the next page)

Roger Conner, 24, M,-, laborer, -,Ireland

Edward Bema, 26, M,-, “, -, “

So now it becomes more difficult to asertain how they fit together in this household. We recognize that John’s wife, Jane’s mother is not present, presumed died previous to this census and this was confirmed by later research. William is John’s son and Jane’s brother, as are Soloman, and Gabriel. Now the women are harder to determine if they are daughter’s or daughter-in-laws to John. Maria was a mystery for some time. She is yet to be verified but at this point, I believe, she was a daughter. Then John was a son and Mary B. is only 14 so it was assumed she was a daughter. Now Amelia turns out to be William’s wife and Franklin is William and Amelia’s son. This information was proven by later census. Next are John Petton and Hestor Allwood, one listed as a Laborer but Hestor has no profession so who is she, boarder, servant, relative? Then comes a whole slew of Irish laborer’s. Do they work for John, or merely board there. Hard to tell. Does anyone know? Maybe they are field hands working for John and his boys. Maybe that is how Jane met her Irish husband.

So now it is May and I am supposed to be working on the other Irish line, the Ferguson’s. So lets see if I can get anything accomplished on the Ferguson line this month.

If you need more on the Dougherty line check out earlier posts under Categories at the top right hand side of this post, and scroll down to “Dougherty Ancestors”.