1895 Minnesota State Population Census Schedule
Today’s adventures in genealogy haven’t been very exciting. I did turn up a great-great uncle who apparently spent some time in a mental hospital. (Lots of those in my family tree. Eeep!)
I’m not sure what the 0 in front of Alfred’s name indicates (or whether it’s an O or 0). It’s a code, and it surely has a specific meaning. For now I’m assuming it was used for folks who are not actually present in the household at the time of enumeration, but who the enumerator felt needed to be recorded.
I wish there were a way to find out more about why our ancestors were institutionalized, just to satisfy my own nosy curiosity. Alfred was supposedly a patient at what was then known as Fergus Falls Insane Asylum, which doesn’t look to have been a horrific place, but pictures can be deceiving. I’d love to know why he was there, and for how long. (The first photo was taken just five years after the above census, so it’s roughly contemporary with when Alfred was a patient there.)
Fergus Falls State Hospital circa 1900
Other than that, the most exciting part of my day was having a minor brain hemorrhage over how Legacy handles federal level census citations. It creates a master source for federal censuses at the county level. Totally bizarre. And I couldn’t get an explanation for why that was a good idea, when I asked about it in the Legacy user group.
The reason it’s a problem (in my opinion), is that instead of one master source for the entire US census for any given census year, Legacy will create a master for every single county. You could end up with hundreds of master records for every census year.
Why don’t they put the state and county level information in the source detail, where any logical person would expect it to be? That way you would have just one master source for each census year, the way the good lord intended.
I expect this is a “different people think differently” issue. Person A will solve a problem in a way that would never occur to Person B, but both will end up at the same end point eventually.
I wish someone could explain to me what benefit there is in Legacy’s handling of census master sources. Surely there has to be one? And it’s within the realm of possibility that there’s a good reason to do it their way, but so far, no one can explain it. The responses I’ve gotten have mostly been in the vein of, “You don’t have to do it their way.” No shit, Sherlock.
red paper boat 