My Late Wife Ann and Her Burns Connections

[OC Richard]

Very interesting!

My wife has been trying to track down her Knox connection... she has Knox ancestors, miners from the Black Country. According to family legend they were related to John Knox, but who knows?

Census records can reveal things, and give tantalizing hints too. Here what helps is that they were recorded in the order that the census-taker visited the houses. Back in central West Virginia, in deepest darkest Appalachia, everyone lives in "hollers" (narrow steep miniature valleys) so houses are laid out in a single row, along the creek, all the way up the holler. So, the census tells you not only where your ancestor lived, but also who their neighbors were, the entire population of the holler laid out in order.

In looking at a sequence of censuses, I saw that my great-great-grandparents had a daughter, who one year when a teenager disappeared from home, then reappeared the next census. At the same time she returns a baby grandson appears in the home (my grandfather). I assume that this young woman was my grandfather's mother.

But there's more: a couple houses down there was a young man the same age as the young woman, who disappears the same census she does; she reappears the next census but he does not. One can come up with all sorts of romantic and tragic stories that fit the information.