Using Soundex to Locate Census Records
This document was the Second Place Winner in the Genealogy Forum Writing Contest in Fall, 1997. Submitted by Peggy O'Neill (sregon@aol.com).
Several years ago I had the opportunity to visit the National Archives - Pacific Sierra Region at 1000 Commodore Drive, San Bruno, California. I was there on business and had not planned to search the archives for family information. In fact, this was years before I had developed an interest in family genealogy and I did not have a clue about how to look up genealogy at the National Archives. This was before I ever imagined that I would be using a home computer to look up genealogy on the internet!
I had a fifteen minute break from the business I was conducting so I decided to look up my husband's family. My husband's father was placed in an orphanage after both of his parents died of tuberculosis when he was two years old. I knew my husband's grandfather's name was Herbert O'Neill and that he may have been born in Nebraska.
I noticed that everyone in the National Archives had large three ringed binders crammed with pertinent data on their families. I had a blank piece of paper and a pencil. I had never heard of the Soundex system, but I quickly learned that I had to make a conversion from O'Neill to a Soundex Number. There were signs on the walls that told how to make a conversion from a name to a Soundex number. I quickly converted O'Neill into the number O540. My next step was to select a year. My father-in-law was born in 1918. I figured that his father would have been alive in 1890, but to my dismay the 1890 census had been destroyed in a fire. The next available census was 1880. I pulled the Nebraska 1880 Census and looked under O540 for the name O'Neill. In Volume 1, Sheet 49, Line 23 was an Elisha O'Neill age forty-five. He was married to Emaley O'Neill and guess what, they had a fourteen month old son named Herbert O'Neill! I couldn't believe my eyes. My father-in-law had gone 75 years without knowing anything about his father and here I had uncovered information about the O'Neill family in less than fifteen minutes of searching.
I quickly scribbled all the information onto my notepad. Elisha O'Neill, white, male, 45 years old, birthplace, Ohio, parents born in Ireland. He was a carpenter. His wife, Emaley O'Neill was 34 years old, her birthplace was New York. They had three children, Suellan, age 15, born in Nebraska, Frank O'Neill, age 10, born in Missouri, and Herby O'Neill, age 14 months, born in Nebraska. They lived on Pearl Street, in the town of Plattsmouth in Cass County, Nebraska.
I still have those hand written notes and I have referred to them often when conducting subsequent searches. The National Archives staff made copies of the census for me at 50 cents per page, but the copies were lost somewhere on the trip home. I later requested the military records for Herbert O'Neill from the National Archives in Washington D.C. I learned that Herbert O'Neill served in the Spanish American War. He enlisted in Los Angeles at age 18 and later mustered out of the service in San Francisco.
After I became an AOL subscriber, I learned about the GenWeb project. I posted an inquiry on Cass County, Nebraska GenWeb. I found two wonderful people in Cass County, Nebraska that researched the local Cass County Census information for me. Each morning I couldn't wait to get up, turn on my computer and check my e-mail for new information on the O'Neill family from Wendy in Nebraska.
My husband and I took his father on a trip to Yountville, California, in Napa County where we located Herbert O'Neill's grave in the military graveyard. We found his parents' marriage certificate. The prize of our search was a copy of my father-in-law's birth certificate with his correct birth date. For more than 75 years, he had gone by the wrong birth date. No one in the orphanage had known his correct birthday, so they made up a birthday for him! All this information resulted from a fifteen minute search of the U.S. Census in the National Archives!
Submitted by Peggy O'Neill (sregon@aol.com).
The Genealogy Forum - Main Page
Beginners' Center | Internet Center | Message Boards
Surname Center | Reunion Center | File Library
Genealogy Forum News
Shop With Us
Genealogy Forum.com is a production of
Golden Gate Services, Inc. of Armada, Michigan.
© 1998 - 2006 All Rights Reserved. Brenda Jean Bova, President.
The Genealogy Forum is a member of the National Genealogical Society.
Tree logo provided by MeadPond Designs and is the trademark of GenealogyForum.com.© 2006 Some graphics By Carol, All Rights Reserved
If you have any questions or comments,
please contact GenealogyForum@aol.com
