All I Want For Christmas Is The 1890 Census

Did you know that most of the 1890 census was destroyed in a fire in 1921? I didn’t either until recently. I have been repeatedly falling down the rabbit hole of genealogy research trying to map out potential family trees as part of trying to solve the mystery of my biological roots. While I believe the paternal side of my biological mother has been addressed with the help of a person who has been researching 8 branches of his family for 30 years, I have been building out the maternal side of this line and also trying to figure out the mystery of my biological father. There’s much less to go on with trying to figure out my biological father, so it’s been quite a bit harder.

On the bio-father side, I believe I solved one mystery without the 1890 census, but it would have been easier if it was available. I was trying to figure out Anna and Albert U1 to see if they were the same or different than Anna and Albert U2, since both the Anna's and Albert's had birthdays within several years of each other, both families immigrated to this country within several years of each other, and they immigrated within several years of each other.  It turned out they were the same. While there are a lot of family trees to look at on Ancestry, I'm finding that there is a lot of inaccurate information out there.  

Don’t even get me started on how useful it would be to have the census from 1950 going forward. Another thing, I’ve learned recently is that the census is not released to the public for 72 years, so I have to wait until 2022 for the one from 1950.

Having the progress slow down is frustrating, but probably for the best. It easy to get a little overwhelmed by it all.

On the art side, I am slowly getting back to making this more of a priority. I started this painting at Kat's Friday night open studio several weeks ago and finished it yesterday. I am out of practice, but it felt good to put paint on paper.

#288 - Chandler - 8" x 8" - paper

As part of getting art-making back into my life. tonight I spent some time organizing my art-making corner in the basement organized and that felt good, as well.