Potholes in the Road to Mixed-Race Relatives: Slow Down
By now, I thought, I would have located my mother's mixed-race cousin, Curley, in the 1940 census.
Curley is the grandson of my white slaveholder great-grandfather, Erasmus. His father, Thomas, born in 1855, was the son of Erasmus and Annie, a black woman. I don't know yet whether Annie was slave or free.
And I may never know whether Erasmus was using Annie to "grow" more slaves (to quote Henry Louis Gates from the latest "Finding Your Roots" episode), or whether it was plain sexual attraction, or whether it was an affair of the heart.
Right now, finding Curley is my goal. He was 8 in the 1900 census. He was 18 in the 1910 census. He was 28 in the 1920 census. Yet the 1930 census does not mention him. (I searched nationally, but in vain.) Curley does not appear again until 1957, to obtain a SSN. He died as "Kirley" in 1964, in the same South Carolina county where he had lived.
Why do I want to find Curley? He is my first known link to any of my mixed-race relatives who may be alive today.
When I learned about the smooth MyHeritage route to the 1940 census (thank you, @rjseaver on geneamusings.com), I looked for Curley in the townships where he lived, in 1900, 1910, 1920, and 1964. No luck.
Well, then, I would just have to search that entire South Carolina county.
The whole county includes 40 townships. At an average of 45 pages per township, that makes 1800 pages.
I'm halfway through, and no Curley/Kirley so far.
In 1940, Curley would be 48, and his wife Charlotte 46. Judging from the 1920 census, their children would be 26 down through 21.
Page by page, I'm recording charts of everyone with the family surname, especially those marked "Neg" (the 1940 abbreviation for African-American).
At the same time, I'm looking for Curley and his family with a different surname. Melvin Collier @MelJCollier on Roots Revealed, in "Ain't Gonna Take Massa's Name," reminds us that African-Americans often shed their slave surname.
In this scenario, as I imagine it, Curley discovered that he had a white grandfather only in 1921, when he signed the death certificate for his father, Thomas. The name was there in plain sight. Curley, shocked and offended, changed his surname.
Therefore, I'm looking on the 1940 census for any of these first names marked "Neg": Curley, Charlotte, and their children Ida May, Lilian, Josh, and Tom—each with any surname whatsoever. I've found a very few of these first names with relevant ages.
Searching for six first names and a surname—that is taking me a while.
There are about 1000 pages left in the county. When I read tweets announcing 1940 census "finds," I feel both inspired and a little let down by comparison.
I don't want to be like the character in Melville's story, "Bartleby, the Scrivener." Bartleby painstakingly recorded so many law documents that one day he simply quit. He said he "preferred not to."
If I mean to keep going, I'll have to slow down my little research car as I bump through these potholes.
This part of the trip is finite. Admittedly, it could fail. But there are more roads to travel. I'm the only car in sight, and I'm in this genealogical journey for the long haul. I need to keep myself in good repair.
This Easter Sunday, I'm taking a short break and tending to my sprouting perennials—columbine, evening primrose, spiderwort, astilbe, geranium, foxglove, wisteria, poppy, and others whose names elude my imperfect memory.
These plants rested during the winter. But here they are once more, renewed.
