1910 - 1930 Mary Nolan delving deeper !!

1910 where are we at in the world at this time ?

Here are a few events and discoveries that were happening. Check out the washing machine date.  Thank goodness for Alva I say.

Jan 3 British miners strike for 8 hour working day

Figure 1: the first electric washing machine
called The Thor and invented by Alva Fisher

Jun 2 Pygmies discovered in Dutch New Guinea
Aug 9 Alva Fisher patents electric washing machine
Oct 5 Portugal overthrows monarchy, proclaims republic
Dec 3 Neon lights first publicly displayed (Paris Auto Show)

If you are chasing further information concerning different years, have a look here as its a easy to manoeuvre site. http://www.onthisday.com/date/1910

I sort of wanted to start off like this as to get my head back into that era. It helps me develop a picture and gives me that imagination and enthusiasm to dig further.

As I have previously mentioned our Mary was living with an Italian family in 1910, this was recorded in the census of that year. The address was 261 East St 8th St Pauls. There is mention of 6 children born with 1 now  living, (this being Robert). She is working as a domestic at a restaurant.

The interesting snippet of info that I get from the above 1910 census entry is the 6 children born. I have found no further details regarding other births for Mary, besides Robert at all and unfortunately I feel this might not be able to be verified.

Keeping with the timeline, Mary's only surviving child, Robert marries in 1918 in Missouri.

We next find her in 1920 at 423 East St 7th St Pauls where she is listed as a lodger and gives her occupation as a dishwasher at a restaurant. Her age is given as 50 years.
I have tried to research the street addresses for St Pauls where our Mary was residing but I am having difficulty narrowing down specifics.

Figure 2 : Map of Saint Paul 1903

I did come across this map above of St Paul in 1903 on a great site and felt this gave me an idea of the layout of the city around that period.

There are a series of streets, named 5th, 6th, 7th to name some examples that run parallel to each other.

The shaded  grid area looks to be the inner city area and East St 7th seems to be located on the upper right hand side of this section. You will also notice the Missippi River runs right through the city.

The map is from this site here, which is a great research tool and can be purchased as well.

St. Paul and Minneapolis Maps (click on the blue link to take you to the page).

As a bit of extra information, when Robert, Mary's son filled in his Registration Card in 1917 for WWl he lists his mother as being dependant on him.

Mmmmm interesting,  does that mean Mary was unable to work at that time ?  Going back to the 1920 Census she is working as a dishwasher at a restaurant. 

My next question is where did Mary reside between the years of 1920 to 1930 as in the 1930 US Census we find her having moved to Kansas City. To find further information on this I will have to look in the Directories and see if I can track her down.

Alas that is a job for another time.

Tune it for next week where I will be looking at Mary - from 1920 onwards with her move to Kansas City 

Hope you have enjoyed the read and I am off to have a cuppa :)

Read and Refresh - the 2 R's when it comes to family history

With a nice strong coffee in hand and my favourite recliner chair wound back I made a start on my re-reading of my records and files. Two hours later, I was still going and decided I needed to put a halt to it as it was getting close to tea time and hungry mouths were calling me.



What I found is that I am quite organised as to how I store my hard copy files but its my online data that needs some sort of  system. What a must this is in the world we live in, I need to be able to access this data as fast as possible, not search and go through a mountain of discs to find what I want.


Do I use an external hard drive or copy everything over to my Dropbox account. ????
I will need to check out other storage options at a later date, but now I need to make a decision as to which way to go. I am leaning towards Dropbox because I can access that on both my phone and tablet.

Going through my hard copy files brought out many emotions. One being WOW, I have actually amassed quite a lot of information.
I also came across a few pages of Nans infamous Snake Stories, what a read, she was indeed a brilliant story teller and writer. Hopefully you can have a read here with page 1 shown.


So my brain is now familiar again with where I am up to in my research and what's missing.


The next process is to set out a research plan to empower myself with the updated resources so I can follow along with my missing links.