Finding famous folk in historical records, part tres

Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, his wife Olivia, and two daughters Susan and Clara are living in Hartford, Connecticut in 1880, where he is listed in the census as "author," just 4 years after the publication of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and five years before the publication of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." 20 years later, he and his wife are still living there with Clara and their third daughter, Jean.

In 1900, George H. Ruth was a little 5 year old living with his parents in his native Baltimore, Maryland. By 1930, he was living in New York as a baseball player going by the nickname "Babe."

In 1920, 5 year old Joe DiMaggio was living with his parents, grandparents, and 8 siblings in San Francisco, California. You can also find old newspaper clippings on Ancestry about DiMaggio temporarily quitting baseball to fight in World War II.

Albert Einstein can be found on 3 passenger lists sailing into New York: in April 1921, listed as a professor of Hebrew ethnicity; in December 1930; and in October 1933, listed as a scientist.

Thomas Edison, as Alvah Edison, can be found living as a 13 year old in Port Huron, Michigan in the 1860 census. In 1900, Edison and his family are living in West Orange, New Jersey, where he is supporting them as a "general inventor."

The lists, of course, go on and on, depending on who you find interesting and who you want to find out more about. For added fun and a way to keep doing genealogy that interests you when your own family tree search has stalled, I like to trace the trees of these famous folk to see if their tree and mine intersect anywhere close at all (so far for me? Not really...not anywhere before the 1700s, anyway...) Pick figures who share the same ethnic history as you, and you can even do current figures (Brad Pitt? Madonna? Princes William and Harry?Brett Favre?)...if you can find their parents and/or grandparents on record, that's all you need to get started...

Looking for famous folk in historical records, part deux

I didn't realize there were so many people I had looked up in my spare time, so now that I've shared some of the historical figures I find intriguing enough to "genealogically stalk," here are some of the Hollywood actors I also looked for and found:

Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart are on a passenger list flying into New York from London on April 8, 1954 (it's still kinda weird for me when passenger manifests cross over from ships to planes, but oh well...)

5 year old Marlon Brando is living with his parents and siblings in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska in the 1930 census.

In the 1910 census, 2 year old Marion R. Morrison is living with his parents in Madison, Iowa. In 1920, he is Marion M. Morrison (his parents changed his middle name from Robert to Michael when they decided to name their second son Robert), and his parents have moved with him and his brother to Glendale, California. Why do you care about little Marion? Because one day he'll grow up to be John Wayne...

7 year old Frances Gumm, born in Minnesota, is living with her family in Antelope, California in 1930. She will one day go by the stage name Judy Garland.

In the 1930 census, Victor and Lillian Crawford of Indianapolis, Indiana, have taken in their daughter, Julian, and her 2 month old son, Terrence "Steve" McQueen...

In the 1891 England Census, 2 year old Charles "Charlie" Chaplin is living with his mother, Hannah, a music professional, his brother, and his maternal grandmother, Mary Hill, a wardrobe dealer, in London.

In 1930, Charlie Chaplin, the "motion picture actor," is living in Beverly Hills. On the same census page is listed Douglas Fairbanks and his wife, Mary (Pickford), both also "motion picture actors."

A break from your own genealogy: looking for famous folk in historical records

Yes, it is something I consider a fun pasttime - I greet all your shouts of "genealogy dork!" and "history nerd!" with three little words: you're not wrong...

Sometimes the genealogical search becomes overwhelming. Sometimes the brick walls become frustrating. That's when I make a list of celebrities and historical figures to search for on Ancestry.com. Most of them are dead now. Many of them were dead before I was even born. Some of them are preserved forever as either actors or characters in Hollywood films, but there's just something about seeing their names on a worn census form as a child, or with their families, or just eking out a living, way back before anyone ever knew they'd be someone history would one day remember, that makes them feel extremely real and extremely human. (Let the name calling continuing...please, try to be creative with your barbs!)


I guess it started after I watched Tombstone, the Kurt Russell-Val Kilmer movie about Wyatt Earp. Earp was born in Illinois in 1848, and died in 1929, which means in theory he should be able to be found on every census from 1850 to 1920 - there he is as a 2 year old in Lake Prairie, Illinois with his siblings and parents, N.P. (Nicholas Porter) and Virginia; in 1870, he was living in Missouri near his brother and he was married; by 1880, he was living in Tombstone, Arizona with his brothers Virgil and James, which is where the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral would take place just a year later...in 1910, he's now in California with his third wife, Josephine...

Recommendations: Do a bit of research ahead of time. Wikipedia is a good place to start, but like anything on the Internet, don't assume it's all fact. Still, Wiki can be helpful to tell you when and where a person was born, who their parents were, and where they might have lived at a certain time, profession, all helpful for people (not Wyatt Earp, of course, who had a fairly unique name) who might have had a somewhat common name. Oh, and also to look up what their real name is...there are a lot of Hollywood celebrities you won't be able to find because they're known by a stage name...

Wyatt Earp is definitely one of my favorites...some of the other people I've looked up:

Doc Holliday, of course! Real name John Henry, born in Georgia, originally a dentist by trade. In 1870 he's living in Valdosta, Georgia with his father and stepmother as an 18 year old student...by 1880 he's in Prescott, Arizona as "J. H. Holliday" as a dentist (Ancestry does a fairly good job of identifying famous people in their census indexes)

Abraham Lincoln...in 1850, "Abram Lincoln" is a 40 year old attorney living in Springfield, Illinois with his wife and young son...still there 10 years later...

In 1930, the "Hon. Franklin Roosevelt" is living in Albany, New York as the governor...

In the 1900 census, Governor Theodore Roosevelt is living in Oyster Bay, New York with his wife and their gaggle of children and servants...in 1910, he's still there, but now he's a magazine editor...

John F. Kennedy can be found in the 1920 census in Brookline, Massachusetts as a 3 year old with his banker father, Joseph, his mother, Rose, and his siblings Joseph and Rosemary...

Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the "Little House on the Prairie" series, another one of my all-time favorites!!! (for some reason I enjoy searching for historical figures like Laura and Wyatt Earp who lived all over the place)...in 1870, 3 year old "Laura Ingles," born in Wisconsin, is living in Rutland, Kansas, with her parents and her two sisters...by 1880, the family is living in De Smet, Dakota Territory...in 1900, Laura is living in Pleasant Valley, Missouri, with her husband Almanzo (A.J.) and daughter, Rose...

In 1900, Amelia Earhart is just a 2 year old girl living with her parents and sister in Kansas City, Kansas...in 1930, Amelia, a "flyer and writer" by occupation, is living in New York City...Seven years later she would disappear while attempting to fly solo around the world...

(Laura Ingalls Wilder and Amelia Earhart are two of my childhood female heroes, rounded out by Annie Oakley, who I am now determined to find in a census - real name Phoebe Ann "Annie" Mosey/Mozee/Moses, born 1860, married to Frank Butler)...another mystery to solve!

Like a kid in a candy store...

Yay!! After just a little more than 2 weeks, the Municipal Archives comes through, and yes, to be fair to whoever put together the index, the names on the marriage certificate do look like John Riekleffs and Neta Tiedermann. Of course, all you have to do is flip it over to the other side and look at their signatures and their names are clearly John Ricklefs and Meta Tiedemann. Frustrating, yes. But there are thousands of certificates indexed there and I don't blame whoever put that index together if they didn't feel like creating twice as much work for themselves. I complain about the often shoddy interpretation of handwriting on these records (that goes for Ancestry.com's census index as well), but I thank from the bottom of my heart those people who put in the time and effort of putting that index together in the first place, making my life and genealogical searches so, so much easier.

Anyway, what a find. On the back, we have every line of information filled out, including both sets of parents (yay! That's huge!) - John Ricklefs, living at 222 First Avenue in NYC, almost 23, an oyster dealer born at Bremerhaven, Germany to Friedrich Ricklefs and Sophie Dozen (?) - Familysearch.org lists her name as Sophie Dozen and so far, that is what it looks like to me...we'll see if I change my mind upon further inspection. He's marrying Meta Tiederman, living at 222 First Ave., almost 25 years old, born in...not only is her place of birth listed as Hanover, Germany, but there's a town, too! This could be invaluable in finding birth records or records on her parents...if only I could make out that illegible handwriting! Will keep trying, though, of course...to John Henry Tiedermann and Meta Buckmann. It's the first marriage for both. Witnesses, Leopold Ropper and Gertrude Andriano. Married by Morris W. Leibert, pastor of the German-Moravian Church.

This kind of stuff gets my heart pumping...so exciting! And it came on Saturday and I didn't know till Sunday night...I'm shocked my father didn't open it the minute it arrived. This record though should further some research and speculation for a bit, whether or not it turns up anything else more conclusive. At the least, though, I've gotten that branch back one generation further...I'm like a kid in a candy store with this thing!

Genealogical mystery: Cronins, Donohues, and Cullinanes

So, like I've said before, siblings are key. Along that same vein, cousins can also be key to going further back on family lines. If you can make the connections.

My grandmother, Mary Cronin Raynor, was the main genealogist for years in my family. Just the other day I was marveling over how much she accomplished, how much she discovered without ever using a computer. Her research has been invaluable to me.

In her research, she talks about Cronin cousins, the Donohues and the Cullinanes. The Donohues intrigue me because my grandmother's grandmother, Nora Donohue Cronin, born in Ireland in the late 1830s, is the farthest back I can go on that line. John, Dennis, Timothy, and Katherine Donohue (married name Shea) are cousins living in Brooklyn at the turn of the century, contemporaries of my great-grandfather, Timothy Cronin. I found them listed in a census with parents named Cornelius and Hannah Donohue (born late 1830s, early 1840s in Ireland), which means Cornelius could be a brother or a cousin of my Nora. If I can find someone tracing Cornelius as a direct line, or further information about that line, it could prove helpful to my Nora Donohue search...

More confusing, however, are the Cullinanes, John and Julia, and their kids John, Denis, Ellen, Mary, Timothy, and Nora, who came over from Ireland and settled in the Dobbs Ferry area of Westchester. My grandmother believed the Cullinanes were also cousins on the Donohue line, but research done by descendents of John Jr. through his daughter Julia show that Julia Sr.'s maiden name was...Cronin. So are the Cullinane's cousins of Nora Donohue's husband Denis Cronin? Could Julia be a cousin or sister of his?

The mystery deepens, however.

Timothy Cronin, son of Denis and Nora, married Ellen Casey. In my research on the Casey line, specifically the line of Ellen's mother, Mary Agnes Enright, I found the following information. Mary's parents were John Enright and Bridget Collins (born in Ireland in late 1830s), and according to Bridget's death certificate, her parents were Thomas Collins and...Ann Cullinane. So it's possible the Cullinanes are cousins on the Casey-Enright side (my grandmother's mother's branch, as opposed to her father's branch).

So the search for information continues...