Boring Genealogy Post

Finally, finally got into some genealogy research after a big long break. I thought it would be nice to share some of the process on here. You will either be bored to tears or want to look up your own family.

What I started with was that I knew all of my great-great grandparents, and at least one more generation except for one person- my great-grandma Rausch's dad's name was Harry Robinson. I knew he was born in 1866 in Ohio, but I couldn't find out anything else. His name was not uncommon enough to narrow it down in the census, and I haven't been able to get his death certificate to get more info.

So a couple weeks ago I was looking at the later census records that I had on him and realized that while his name is pretty common, his heritage is not. He was born in Ohio, but his father was born in Louisiana and his mother was also born in Ohio. Moving from Louisiana to Ohio is not a normal migration pattern. So I did a search for Harry Robinson born in Ohio with a father born in Louisiana. Sure enough, there was just one that fit everything.

In the 1880 census, Harry and his parents, EA and Ella, were actually living in Kansas.I kept looking and found them in the 1870 census in Ohio. This time dad was listed as Edwin. These people really moved around. I would be very interested to know why.

Then I put it all away for a while. Yesterday when I started looking at it again, I noticed that Edwin's heritage is a little different as well. He was born in Louisiana like his mother, but his father was born in New York. So I went looking for him in earlier census records. I found him with his parents Elihu and Rachel in the 1860 census, and then I found just the parents living near Edwin in the 1870 census.

So I found two more generations on that line just by looking at details that I hadn't considered before. Now I just need to figure out why they moved around so much and where they actually settled and are buried.