Footnote Friday: Three Cheers for the 1930 Census Index!

Melody ♦ October 17, 2009 ♦ Leave Your Comment

I have spent a week working on a de Mello family who came from the town of Maia, Ribeira Grande, Sao Miguel Island, Azores.  In the 1910 census, I found Eugenio de Mello in Fall River, Bristol Co., MA.  His brother’s Manoel and Marianno were living in New Bedford, Bristol Co., MA in the same household.

Then poof!  they vanished.  I had an idea that Eugenio moved to Rhode Island.  I was able to find a WWI Draft Registration Card to prove he was there in 1918.  But, Manoel and Marianno were nowhere to be found.

A couple of city directory pages were all I could find of Eugenio.  Multiple searches in ancestry.com’s 1920 and 1930 census indexes turned up nada!  You don’t know how many ways I tried to spell Eugenio and de Mello.  I even did an open ended search just in Warren, where they were supposed to have lived.

I noticed something quirky about the census sheets.  In the new viewer on ancestry.com part of the bottom of the sheets are cut off.  I couldn’t even go page by page to find the family if I wanted to.

I decided to see if I would have better luck at footnote.com as they also have the 1930 census index.  Shoot!  5 minutes into my search I found Eugenio, his son, Seraphine (under the hilarious name Snophine), and his son, Joseph.  What a relief!  I beginning to think there was foul play at hand or at the very least, spontaneous combustion.

I should have started at footnote.com rather than ended there!  Now, I am off to find Mr’s Marianno and Manoel.  Wish me luck!

www.footnote.com