The name’s not the same
It was a lesson not to be forgotten, taught by Uncle Ray.
He was The Legal Genealogist‘s uncle by marriage, the husband of my mother’s sister Carol. And, I remember, as I was just learning to carefully document the members of my own family, I was trying to find out exactly who his parents and siblings were.
In other words, as a baby genealogist, I was trying to find him in the census records.
This was purely collateral research, of course, not anything I really needed to know. After all, I thought, there wasn’t much I didn’t know about Ray; I’d known him most of my life.
He’d married my Aunt Carol in 1953,1 and I can’t remember a time in my growing-up years when he wasn’t part of all of our lives. Ray and Carol always lived either in Virginia or in North Carolina — easy driving distance from my grandparents’ Virginia farm — and he and Carol and my cousins Barbara and Philip are always there in all the photos taken as I was growing up.
But we had lost Ray early… born 91 years ago this coming Monday, on 5 October 1924, he was not yet 68 when he died in January 1992. He was buried at Byrd Memorial Methodist Chapel in Kents Store, Virginia.2 These days, Carol lies next to him, and they are surrounded by members of my mother’s family.
And — I remember thinking — how hard could it be to find him? Unlike some of the people I was trying to chase in my family history — like my fifth great grandfather John Jones — somebody named Ray Childress shouldn’t be all that hard to find in Virginia.
Yeah.
Right.
The first thing I encountered was that nasty little rule that says census records won’t be available for 72 years after the year in which it was taken.3 Since Ray was born in 1924, the first census he might be recorded on would be the 1930 census. Not available until 2002.
And I remember when that census finally became available… and then finally was indexed… and finally went looking.
And looking.
And looking.
There are somewhere on the order of 20 or so Childress families on that 1930 census in the area of Virginia was Ray was born. Among them, living in those households, they had roughly an equal number of boys of an approximate age to be Ray.
And not a single solitary one of them was named Ray.
Had to be a mistake, right?
So I did it the hard way.
I read that census record, line by line, page by page, looking for an unindexed (or inaccurately) indexed Childress family.
And came up empty.
So I expanded the search. I went out beyond the independent city where I knew Ray had been born and looked in the adjacent counties.
And came up empty.
Expanded the search again — somewhere in the Commonwealth of Virginia, there had to be a census record for Ray Childress in 1930.
And came up empty.
I can’t tell you how many times I put this aside and came back to it, sure that if I just searched a slightly different way I would find Ray Childress in that census record.
And, of course, you can tell me what kind of a ditz I was for not going back to my Aunt Carol, or to some other source than what I “knew” from having been around Ray all of my growing-up years.
Because you already know the way this story ends, don’t you?
His name wasn’t Ray.
Not his first name.
Not his middle name.
Not Ray at all, except to the family.
When I finally got around to doing genealogy the right way — gathering facts and documents instead of going with what I “knew” to be true — I carefully documented that Miller Hamilton Childress, affectionately known as “Ray” to the family, was born 5 October 1924 in Lynchburg, Virginia,4 the fifth child and third son of Thomas Henry Childress and Dora Bell Moore.5 He lived there throughout his childhood,6 and until he joined the U.S. Navy on 31 August 1942, just before his 18th birthday.7 And he returned there when he was discharged 9 November 1945.8
Sigh…
It’s a hard lesson to learn, as a baby genealogist, that just because two records talk about someone of the same name (my John Jones, for example) doesn’t mean they refer to the same person. We all eventually learn not to make assumptions just because the name’s the same.
But it may be a harder lesson still that just because we “know” what the name is, maybe, just maybe, the name’s not the same at all.
SOURCES
- Interview of Carol (Cottrell) Childress (Kents Store, VA), by the author, 28 Mar 2004; notes privately held by the author. ↩
- Byrd Memorial Methodist Church Cemetery (Kents Store, Fluvanna County, Virginia; on Venable Road (Route 601), approximately 1000 feet east of the intersection with Kents Store Way (Route 659), Latitude 37°52’43″N, Longitude 78°07’27″W), Ray Childress marker; photograph by J.G. Russell, 22 Dec 2002. ↩
- See “The ‘72-Year Rule’,” U.S. Census Bureau (https://www.census.gov/ : accessed 2 Oct 2015). ↩
- See Social Security Death Index, entry for Miller H. Childress; Mocavo.com (http://www.mocavo.com/ : accessed 4 Oct 2013). ↩
- See 1930 U.S. census, Lynchburg City, state, population schedule, enumeration district (ED) 18, page 160(A) (stamped), sheet 14(A), dwelling 231, family 258, Miller H Childress; digital image, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 4 Oct 2013); citing National Archive microfilm publication T626, roll 2468 ↩
- See ibid. Also 1940 U.S. census, Lynchburg City, Virginia, population schedule, enumeration district (ED) 111-35, sheet 4(B), household 70, Miller H Childress; digital image, Archives.gov (http://1940census.archives.gov : accessed 4 Oct 2013); citing National Archive microfilm publication T627, roll 4309. ↩
- “U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010,” database, Fold3.com (http://www.fold3.com : accessed 4 Oct 2013). ↩
- As to the discharge, ibid. As to his residence, see e.g. Hill’s Lynchburg City Directory 1950 (Richmond, Va. : Hill’s Directory Co., 1950), 35, entry for Miller H Childress; digital images, Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com : accessed 4 Oct 2013). ↩
I can feel your pain.
I had a reference in my G grandparents’ diaries to an “Uncle Dick” that I had a VERY hard time figuring out. One would think he had a given name of Richard, yes? No. I eventually worked out that “Uncle Dick” was, in fact, my G grandmother’s uncle – whose first name was Charles. No middle name that I have been able to discover. I doubt I ever find out how Charles came to be known as Dick.
Thanks for your interesting postings.
Sigh… I think our families do this to us on purpose…
It’s amazing how many lessons we learn from our relatives after they leave us and how varied they are.
And how many of those lessons leave us smacking our heads and thinking, “I should have known that…”…
Your next task, with Uncle Ray, would seem to me to be figuring out when and why he chose his own name. Because I bet that’s what happened. If I were named Miller Hamilton, I’d pick a nickname too. Is there anybody still alive who knew him has a child or young man, maybe in the service, who would know why he picked “Ray?” Is one of their children still alive, if you’re lucky? They’re your first cousins. Are you still in touch?
It’s a great story, and a salutary reminder.
One of my uncles by marriage had a bunch of brothers who all looked alike. I was hunting them down, doing collateral research. “Uncle Dick” showed up in one census in Montana, when he was a young teenager, as “Dictator.” I asked my cousin, his niece “by blood” what she knew. His father had a “cruel” sense of humor, and Dick was their first child, after many years of a “barren” marriage. “He’s going to be a little dictator,” he said, and turned it into his name. Dick never used it when he had a choice. I was glad I never met the father. All six or seven sons I met had weird, wild senses of humor, but none were cruel.
Dictator! I love it!
Uncle Bud Ray the infamous Bald Knobber was born William Jason Ray.
It could’ve been worse – I DID know Ray’s real name, and found a similarly aged Miller H. Childress in Goochland County in 1930 and think it was Ray before doing a bit more research.
Just don’t go looking for Dad under “George” 🙂
*thought
What, no Sonny George in the census? 🙂
Loved this blog. I’ve been there a couple of times. One thing you said that grabbed my attention was “5 g grandfather John Jones” I have one of those also, my 5g grandfather on BOTH sides was John Jones. Born 1764 somewhere (probably VA or MD) and died 1858 in Henderson County NC. Oh the hours and travel spent chasing him.
Sounds like your journey and mine parallel on that: my John Jones was born in VA in 1750 and died in Rutherford County NC in 1821.
I have Childress ancestors in Virginia, too … mostly in Hanover and Goochland counties … and it seems every single one of them is named James or William or Charles, and so are their cousins and siblings – I would KILL for just one nickname!!
I never knew my grandfather’s name – he was always called “Jack” Gillespie by everyone. It was a huge surprise to me to find him – finally – listed as William John Gillespie. He and his brother were always known by their middle names, and of course a common nickname for John, is often Jack. And I ran across a client of mine whose grandfather was always been called “Tug” – he tells me his family has absolutely no idea what his actual name is.