Census Mistakes: Parent’s birthplace

We all know that there are mistakes in the census.  We complain about mangled names which make it difficult to find our ancestors.  We are confused by ages when the women seem to get younger with every passing 10 years.  I am always skeptical when I see conflicting birthplaces listed for parents, but I figure that a wife (who might have been the one giving the information) might not really know where her husband’s parents were born.  I consider them “hints” rather than “facts”.

In this example from District 16, Waco, McLennan County, Texas, in the 1930 census, the birthplaces of the parents are switched.


Since the people in this listing (L. Lloyd Edmonds and his 4 children) are lodgers, their relationship to each other is not indicated in the census.  However, I know that Amanda M., Lloyd Jr, Lee O., and Vivian are the children of the widower.  (I also know that they spelled Loyd with one L rather than two.)

You will note that the father’s place of birth is listed as Texas, but the place of birth of father on each of the children’s lines is listed as Tennessee.  If you took this at face value, you would think that Loyd might be an uncle rather than the father of these 4 children.  However, the birthplace of the mother is listed as Texas.  In reality, the two columns (birthplace of father and birthplace of mother) are swapped.  Their deceased mother was born in Tennessee.

This makes one wonder if the entire page is similarly transposed, or possibly every page completed by this particular enumerator.

This is just one more thing that we have to be on the lookout for.

The Jeweler’s Clock

Sometimes in the movies the story is told backwards.  That’s how I’m going to tell this true story.

A fascinating old clock hangs on the wall at my brother’s house.  Grammy passed it on it to him some 20 years ago.  The clock is a pendulum wind-up clock with gold leaf lettering from the establishment where it once hung:

The
J. Levinski Co.
Leading
Jewelers
417 Austin St.
Waco, Tex.

Prior to keeping time at my brother’s house in Tennessee, it hung on the wall in my parents home in Oklahoma.  Prior to that, it hung on the wall at Aunt Nettie’s house in Fort Worth.  Nettie Wilma Fitzhugh Lessor was my father’s stepmother’s sister.

We visited at Aunt Nettie home in the late 1960s.  The first thing my dad saw when we entered the house was the Jeweler’s Clock hanging over the fireplace.  He  complained that the clock was his and therefore shouldn’t be hanging at his aunt’s house.  Aunt Nettie was gracious and gave my dad the clock that day.

Aunt Nettie had probably had the clock for at least 20 years.  Her sister, my dad’s stepmother “Mother Nell”, had given it to her while my dad was in the US Navy during World War II.  Even in the mid-1940s, he had been upset and concerned that his parents had given away or disposed of some of his belongings in his absence.

The clock had no direct ties to the family back then.  From 1940 through 1943, before becoming an officer in the Navy, my father, Lee Edmonds, attended Baylor University, the hometown college, and commuted on the bus. In a family of 5 students (he was the middle child) money was tight, and he worked off some of his expenses with a campus job doing janitorial work.  As part of the job, he found the discarded clock in a closet on campus, inquired about it, and was allowed to keep it.  He lugged it home on the city bus.  That’s how the clock came into our family.

I found myself wondering about “J. Levinski, Jeweler” and did a little research.  I found a photograph of the interior of the jewelry store taken in 1907 in Waco Texas: A Postcard Journey by Agnes Warren Barnes at Google books.  In order to respect the copyright, I won’t include the picture here, but you can follow the Google books link to see it.

Jacob (Jake) Levinski is listed in the 1910, 1920, and 1930 census at 724 N 19th Street in Waco with his wife Sarah, daughter Ruth, and sons Julian and Philip.  His occupation is listed as owner of a jewelry store and his sons also worked at the store.  Bingo!  Depending on which census you want to believe, he was from Germany, Poland or Russia.  Further investigation turned up a 1892 Passport application which lists Prussia, in Germany, as his birthplace.  Russia on the 1910 census was probably just a misunderstanding.

According to that passport application, Jacob Levinski was 5 feet 6 inches at 31 years of age.  He had blue eyes, a large nose, a small mouth, around chin, an oval face, dark brown hair, and a dark complexion. 

Jacob Levinski died in September of 1939.  Jacob and his wife Sarah are buried at Hebrew Rest Cemetery in Waco.  Assuming that his sons did not take over (or succeed at) the jewelry store business, it probably closed shortly after his death.  This would explain the abandoned clock, but does not explain what it was doing in a closet at Baylor University.

Since there has never been any indication of a connection between the Edmonds family and the Levinski family, there is a another strange coincidence that I’d like to point out:  The Levinskis lived just 3 blocks from the Edmonds family.

Any curious researching souls are welcome to add comments about any tidbits regarding Jacob Levinski and his jewelry store.