Taking Down More Brick Walls, Part 1

Woody, 11 June 2001 to  10 August 2016

We just put our Border Collie to sleep this morning so I needed something to occupy my mind.  I decided to work on my family tree.  I have some partial brick walls impeding my progress.  I need to clean up some bricks and mortar so that I can break through to the other side.  I thought I might be able to finish that cleanup now that I have the right tools and better skills than when I started this journey down the Olson Family Lane.

I have a partial brick wall surrounding my father's birth certificate.  There was a time I couldn’t find the birth certificate for my father, Robert Harold Olson born 13 September 1916.  Then, as luck would have it, I came across a Harold Olson born 12 September 1916.  I decided to take a chance and order the document for immediate download from Cook County Illinois.

I ordered and paid for the document, and I downloaded it to my computer’s hard drive.  I looked at all of the information on the certificate.  Here’s what I was able to determine: 

• The handwritten birth date of 12 September 1916 looked as if it was really 13 September 1916.  I compared the writing of the numbers to others in the document and the 2 appeared to be a 3.  Not enough, however, to verify that it was in fact my father.

• The father’s name was Howard A Olson.  That’s the name of my paternal grandfather.

• The father’s age at the time of the birth was 34.  That corresponds with the age of my grandfather based on his birth year.

• The mother’s name was Gertrude H Minor.  That’s the name of my paternal grandmother – except for the middle initial.

• The mother’s age at the time of the birth was 28.  That corresponds with the age of my grandmother based on her birth year.

• There is a reference to the number of children – the answer is four.  My dad was the fourth child born to Howard and Gertrude.

Even with all this information I wasn’t 100% sure it was my father.  Was it possible there was another set of parents of the same names and ages?  I thought it was a remote possibility so I was only 99.7% sure that Harold was my dad.  I’d never heard of his name being any different from how I knew him, but it was certainly possible.

Just this morning I decided to do more research.  I wanted to see if the addresses on the census reports agreed with the address on the birth certificate.  If not, was the address on the birth certificate in the same neighborhood?  My paternal ancestors were from Norway and Sweden so most, if not all, lived in the area of Andersonville on the north side of Chicago.  I may have researched the addresses years ago but I don’t remember.  My investigative skills have improved over the years so I thought it was worth another try.

I started with the 1900 census even though it was 16 years before the birth of my father.  My grandfather Howard was still at “home” with his mother Josephine and his siblings.  The address was on North Clark St.  I went on to the next census.

I pulled up the page for the 1910 census.  Howard was still at home with his mother and his siblings.  The address shown was now 6000 Hachmuch.  I’d never come across that street name for anyone in my family.  I decided to take a closer look at the document.  However, the details got a little fuzzy as I enlarged the image.  The street number of 6000 looked as if it could be 6050.  Since the family had a home at 6050 North Hermitage in the early 1900s, I thought that the street name as shown on Ancestry could be wrong. What?!?  Yes, it happens.  That's why it's important to question and check information.

I went to the information at the top of the census report.  The ward was #26, and the Enumeration District was 1108.  I did a search online for wards in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois during the 1910 census.  Bingo!  I found a site with maps of the wards for various census years.  The Ward & Enumeration District seemed to be within the neighborhood of the old family home on Hermitage.See the link below.  Just change the year in the url to see other sets of maps.  It's a great source of information for those of us from Chicago.

http://www.alookatcook.com/1910/

I did an online search for the address of the family home.  Bingo again!  The home was within the Enumeration District of the 1910 census.  One piece of information found.  I’ll report the issue to Ancestry or leave a comment so others know of the transcription error.  However, I’m still looking for more addresses to see if I can further verify my father’s birth certificate.  That will be Part 2 of this post.