Census Hunt

I was working on a project for a cousin. I had come to my Great great-grandfather Arthur Cornelious Manire. I was looking at the info I had for him. I only had censuses for him from 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920. I knew he lived until 1949. What about the 1930 and 1940 censuses?

Well I went on to Ancestry.com and plugged in the information I had in the search engine. I couldn't find Arthur. I tried different spellings and using "Wildcards". There wasn't anything remotely close for Arthur. I tried looking up his brother and sister William Archibald and Emma Virginia Manire, who lived with him sometimes. I couldn't find them either.

I had their death certificates. So I went back and looked at Emma's and Arthur's. Emma died in Forestburg, Montague County, Texas in 1936. So I knew she was would be on the 1930 Census. She was also hemiplegic so chances are she'd be with Arthur still. It also stated that she had lived in that area about 37 years. So she should be in the Forestburg, Montague County, Texas area on the Census. Luckily on Ancestry.com I can look at a census page by page if I know the state, county, and city. I looked at the previous census to guess on the precinct or district number. The 2nd page I went to view had them there... so I have the 1930 census. The indexer had them listed as MA?lal instead of Manire.

So I wanted to find the 1940 census also. I looked at Arthur's death certificate. He died in Lubbock County, Texas, but had only been there a few years. So he wasn't living in Lubbock at the time of the census. So I looked for the Montague County Census. There were only a few cities/towns listed and OTHER. St. Jo was one that was listed but I didn't think that was it. It's another family that lived in St. Jo at one time. So I went to the Other... I scrolled down until I came to one that came to edge of Forestburg. There were 2 of them and I wasn't sure which one. I started with the first one... I started going thru the pages 1 by 1. Finally about page 15 I found him with his oldest son's family. Which was kewl since I never had anything with Harry and his wife or kids together. The family was listed under the name Marine instead of Manire.

I was soo elated to find the censuses and fill in some more information.

Manire Family Index

I got the new Family Tree Maker 2012 Software not long ago. It's very kewl stuff. I can tailor it the way I want to in so many ways and it allows me to link the research to my family tree on Ancestry.com. I can look at info on Ancestry.com thru the software when working on a certain person. You can even save the documents from Ancestry to your database in the software.

I've found so many mistakes in some of my older research databases. So I'm redoing a "Manire Notebook" database in my Family Tree Maker. In this notebook I'm adding anything to do with the Manire family. Even stuff I haven't been able to connect to our family tree yet. I'm going to go thru all my notes and all my printed stuff I have in boxes and adding it to the database. It's gonna go a bit slow. I started but realized I have some names missing or some dates missing that keep me from finding the right people in my database to add the notes too. There are too many of the same name in some instances.. It gets very confusing when trying to make sure you have the right person.

I ended up getting a special notebook... and  I made a page for each letter of the alphabet. I went thru several of my older databases and wrote down the first names and middle names of all my Manires. I added just their birth year for reference. It's my Manire Index Notebook. That way I can use the Index to help me put the names in my Database (I can connect the people to families later) and I can use it to reference if I found a new person or not when looking online.

I currently have about 605 people with the MANIRE last name in my database.... The total people in my database currently is 1,089.