Think Outside the Household

1850 US Census showing patriarch listed separately
from family household.

This is another one of those "how could I have missed this?" moments. Sometimes, I get so caught up in trying to find a family on a census that I forget to look for an individual on his or her own. Recently, I was reminded of this when I assumed a male ancestor died before the 1850 US Census was taken on June 1 because I had already found his wife and children living together but he was not listed among the household.

Land ownership map showing the
two properties of my ancestors.

In fact, he was still alive and recorded on the census, he was just listed separately. Why? Because, as I should have remembered, I had a land ownership map which proved he had owned two separate properties - one large, main one where I think the family was living and another, smaller lot not far away. My guess is that my ancestor was tending to the secondary property when the census taker came around. And sure enough, I found him listed on the very same census page, just two house away from his family! He was only listed by his initials, which is probably another reason why I overlooked him or why he wasn't showing up in any auto hints. I am unsure whether he was actually permanently living there or just there temporarily to tend to the secondary property but I lean towards the latter being the case.

This is also a reminder of why land ownership maps can be very important! Without it, I may have still been scratching my head as to why my ancestor was listed separately. I might have assumed he had a second property but without confirmation, the facts would have remained muddled.

1850 US Census showing son apprenticing in another
household.

Also be sure to look for missing children with other households - a neighbor or relative may have taken in a child if the family didn't have enough living space (or financially couldn't support all their children) or if the child was actually helping out around the property of an older neighbor or relative or may have been apprenticing with the head of the household. I also thought a child of the same family may have died before 1850 but then I found him apprenticing as a blacksmith with another family.

Tyler State Park

Tyler State Park is a 1,711 acre small but beautiful and historic state park. It has no connection to my own family history aside from the fact that my parents currently live in walking distance to it. If you're a history lover, the thing you'll most enjoy about the park is the historic houses, some dating back to colonial times. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to track down any specific information on them while I was there - I thought the park office would have a pamphlet or something but apparently the history of the area is only worth a small little corner of their park information pamphlet.

So what it does tell us is that the land was owned by George F. Tyler, who acquired it in stages between 1919 and 1928. So prior to his ownership, portions of it had been broken up and owned by different people. Tyler's family originally lived in the Solly Farm House (right) until their mansion (above) was built but they continued to vacation in it after moving into the mansion. The mansion is now the administration office building for the Bucks County Community College and Solly House was functioning as a hostel up until recently but is now vacant, though Hostelling International are still leasing it apparently. Sadly, it doesn't appear that anyone is taking care of it right now and if someone doesn't start soon, this local icon could deteriorate fast. I can only hope there are future plans for it. The above/right photo of Solly House is merely the original house, many larger extensions were added to the back, as you can see below.

The Tyler's farm had one of the finest herds of Ayrshire diary cattle in the county, as well as poultry, sheep, pigs, and a stable of about 25 horses. Their plentiful crops were mainly used to feed their livestock. They also had several servants - a dozen in 1920 including but not limited to five maids, two laundresses, a cook, and a governess for the family's children who were twelve, nine, and five years old at the time. By 1930, the Great Depression may have even been influencing them as their staff had reduced almost by half, dropping to only seven, mostly maids and also a cook and a butler. By 1940, the servant numbers had gone back up to ten including three maids, two waitresses, a cook and a valet, all working 60 hours a week. Before purchasing the land that would become Tyler State Park, the family lived at 296 Old York Road in Montgomery County. They only had one child at this time and employed a maid and a cook. This information was obtained from census records, hence my inability to make out some of the occupations of servants. George Frederick Tyler had been born in Newport, Rhode Island on August 10, 1883 and married his wife Stella Elkins around 1907. They had three children: Sidney, Molly, and George Jr.

Another icon of Tyler State Park is the Schofield Ford Covered Bridge. Originally built in 1874, it burnt down in 1991 and was rebuilt with authentic materials and methods in 1997. It's the longest covered bridge in Bucks County, shown below.

I wish I could say more about some of the other beautiful historic homes in the park which have been kept up better. Ten of them are currently leased out to residents who care for them. I also wish I had more information on the different pieces of land before they all came into Tyler's possession - after all, he only acquired the first portion of it in 1919 but the land had been settled since colonial times. And I'm sure the Solly House was once owned by a family named Solly but whether it has any connection with the other Solly Farm currently in another area of Bucks County, I don't know. These were the things I was hoping to find out from the park office. Regardless, below are some of the other lovely historic houses and barns to be found in the park and more photos of the back of the Tyler mansion as well.

Addendum: I was browsing the Library of Congress (great resource, by the way) for maps and came across one for Philadelphia and Bucks County from 1681. Curious to see if I could find the area that would become Tyler State Park, I attempted to overlay Google Maps on it and then drew a rough outline in Photoshop. Below is the result, though keep in mind that it's approximate - I could not quite get the maps to line up exactly right and I'm not sure the scales were entirely equal. But this should give you a rough idea of who the original lands of the park area were owned by.

The Importance of Addresses and Directory Records

There are many sources for finding an address. Census records from 1880 and later have house number and street name fields (though some enumerators were neglectful of recording them) and of course there are directory records. For men, the World Wars draft records list their home addresses. Also, sometimes things like death records can list the deceased's last residence.

But what can an address tell you about your ancestors? Aside from being able to pinpoint where they lived and, if the building is still standing, be able to see the actual home they lived in, what can it tell you?

I recently got the answer to this question with one of my 3rd great grandfathers, Robert Russell. I had found an 1881 death record of his infant daughter Rebecca and their residence was listed as 17 West Carson Street in Pittsburgh, Ward 33. From that, and with the help of Steve Morse's Enumeration District Finder, I found Robert on the 1880 US Census at the same address, which I previously hadn't been able to find because his age and place of birth were royally screwed up. So addresses are important to begin with because they can help you track down hard-to-find census records. But what about directory records?

I knew Robert lived at 17 West Carson Street during 1880 and 1881 and according to the census, he was a blacksmith. Armed with this knowledge, I set out to find out roughly how long he lived at this address by using the City Directories collection at Ancestry.com. I prefer to search this collection manually, since it has been transcribed by OCR (optical character recognition) which results in many mis-transcriptions and even leaves some entries completely un-transcribed. This means searching by name or address may not turn up all the results available. So I mess about with page numbers until I hone in on "Russell" for each directory year. To my dismay, I can not find a single entry for Robert Russell at 17 West Carson Street, even in the years 1880 and 1881 when I know he lived there. It's possible he was simply unlisted but what I do find is a lot of entries for a Robert Russell at 17 Sligo row, which is often followed by "Carson" or "W Carson" and/or "33d wd". There seems to be some connection here but what is this "Sligo row"?

Googling Sligo row doesn't give me any results but Sligo itself is the name of a town and county in Ireland (it's also a borough in Clarion County, Pennsylvania but that's irrelevant to my search). This suggests Sligo row was a section of the city heavily populated with Irish immigrants, which makes sense because Robert is an Irish immigrant himself. But how do I know 17 Sligo row is the same address as 17 West Carson Street and why are they being given different names?

First, I suspected that "33d wd" is short for "33rd Ward", which would match the Ward 33 mentioned in the death record detailed above. To confirm this, I go to the front of the directory where it lists common abbreviations used and sure enough, "wd" stands for "Ward". So I have a stronger connection between 17 Sligo row and 17 West Carson Street but what it is exactly? The directories also have street listings in the beginning, detailing where the street is located in reference to the surrounding area, however, Sligo row is not among them. How strange.

I eventually find it as "Sligo block" in an earlier directory record from 1875 and suddenly it clicks: Sligo row is a single, specific block of West Carson Street. I could have stopped here and assumed it was just a block nicknamed after an area of Ireland. But I'd never heard of this before (just one single block being named after a town/county) so I kept digging.

Another directory record from 1874 calls it "Sligo mills" so I decide to Google this and see what kind of results I get. Googling historic information is very hit and miss, sometimes you find exactly what you're looking for, other times you find nothing relevant at all. Fortunately, this time it was the former. "Sligo mills, Pittsburgh" turned up a result for a website about a historical Sligo Iron Works which states it was also known as Sligo Iron Mills. The website says it was located at 121 Water Street (not West Carson) but my intuition is telling me that there is a connection. After all, Robert was a blacksmith and this is an iron mill. There could have been a block on West Carson Street where a number of Sligo employees lived; maybe the company even owned the housing on that block and provided it for their employees. An 1872 historical map of this section of Pittsburgh suggests that at one point, Water Street actually dead ended before reaching Sligo Iron Works while Carson Street ran right through it. The map also shows that the company which owned Sligo Iron Works (Lyon, Shorb & Co.) also owned several, smaller properties on Carson Street that look like residential housing. Maybe these were the block known as Sligo row (sadly, they are not numbered on the map).

Certainly, they are all related somehow and in the middle of it is my ancestor Robert Russell, which gives me some insight into perhaps where he worked but certainly the area where he lived. And all this because I found a record saying his address was 17 West Carson Street. This may seem boring to some but I hope that my trail of research can inspire others to dig deeper and follow similar leads of their own. Don't just collect locations or addresses, explore the areas and find out more. Where will addresses you find lead you?