by Paula Stuart Warren, CG
Never give up. Recheck what you checked before. Review your notes. Step away from it for a while. I did all this and still never found one of my ancestral families in the 1895 Minnesota State Census.
A couple of weeks ago I was at the National Genealogical Society Conference in Richmond, Virginia. While there I had a couple of conversations with fellow genealogists about how those of us who had been working on our family history for many years sometimes forget to return to the basics.
I thought about it and for my Stuart family I believed I had gone over the basics several times. I had them on every other applicable state and federal census, but using city directory addresses, ward maps, and other tools, I still could not find them in the mostly unindexed 1895 Minnesota State Census.
Of course, the frequent moves of this family added to the problem. Then that surname of Stuart made it worse: Stuart, Stewart, Stuard, and all the other variations you might expect. My great-grandfather was Alexander Charles Stuart, or A.C. Stuart, or Alexander Stuart, or Alex Stuart. I even have his own signature using the spelling of Stewart. (Not a helpful man.) Several clues told me they were either in Stillwater or St. Paul, both of which are in Minnesota. I figured they arrived in Minnesota in 1893-94. His brother James E. Stuart, a well-known Postal Inspector, was extremely easy to find year after year in Chicago; newspaper indexes yield much on his postal and military career.
My branch was definitely not a wealthy family and I suspect that many of the moves from state to state, within a state, and just about every year once they arrived in St. Paul, Minnesota, was due to keeping one step ahead of the rent collector. Alex also left his family behind and lived with his brother Robert's family in Salina, Kansas, in the early twentieth century. I have family information and also the World War I draft registrations from Ancestry.com that show details on Alex's sons that helped place their arrival time in Minnesota.
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