Posts Tagged truth or fiction

Truth or Fiction – Genealogy Records

My original intent for last week’s post was to write about analyzing records.  How accurate or reliable is the information? Is the information in the record correct or truthful, does it offer clues, does it spin off another weave in the time continuum.   As a genealogist, to you obsess over the record or log it for future review.  I felt my Unweaving The Stories Woven thread topic needed more explaining, generating a post of its own. The evening was late, dream sleep was calling, and my analysis could wait another day.

I pulled a city directory record related to one of my ancestors from Ancestry.com. The rational Gemini side of me says log the record as a curiosity, to label it as an error on the part of the printer. The inquisitive side wants me to dig deeper.  I find myself fantasying what the information means.  Weaving my own tales of possibilities gleaned from this little thread.

I learned about the valuable information garnered from city directories long before I became interested in genealogy.  I was about 10 years old when I was given a city directory to address postcards for one of my father’s political campaigns.  I sure there is a repressed memory of helping him use the directory for marketing his business also.  In my teen years, I used the city directory to locate the address of record of one or more high school boy crushes.  The beginning threads of my informational analyst job skills.

I used to peruse the directories at the local library for fun.  Really, I did.  In the early 1980’s, I would go to the Burton Historical Collection at the downtown Detroit Library for genealogy research.  The overlords of the keys to the records intimidated this anti-trait shy Gemini with their policies and processes, so designed to keep you away from the locked records hidden in bowels of the library that you so seek. Afraid even to ask, “Can I have one more record, please” so that you are not silenced further by the glare of death.

Enough storytelling, or is it?  I created a couple of fictional stories in my mind for this 1912 Pittsburgh, PA City Directory record.  The record is for my missing great grandfather Adam Budny?  Adam Budny disappeared or left his family in 1917.  I have been looking for clues as to what happen to him.  So why is this source causing trouble?  My great grandparents first settled in Pittsburgh after immigrating from Poland.  Family lore is that they lived in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and then finally Detroit.  So far I have no record of them living in Chicago.  Adam’s brother-in-law, Ignacy Frank Borucki did live in Chicago for awhile.

Four of the Adam’s & Mary’s eight children were born in Pittsburgh, the last four in Detroit.  My sources include a death record with an address for their first child born in America, Peter, who only lived a few weeks in 1902.  Stanley Budny’s 1902 birth record and a 1903 Pittsburgh city directory listing the same address as Peter’s death record.  Adam and Mary Budny arrived in Detroit sometime in late 1906 or early 1907.  Adam is listed in the 1907 and subsequent years in the Detroit City Polk Directory.  During my search, I could not find Adam in the 1912 Detroit City Directory.  So when I discovered him in the 1912 Pittsburgh directory, bells went off.  Adam went back to Pittsburgh or so I thought.  I eventually found Adam’s listing in 1912 Detroit city directory. The indexer recorded the first letter as an “R” and that’s why it didn’t show up in the search engine.

Was this Pittsburgh record for a different Adam Budny? How or why, can my great grandfather be recorded in two different cities in the same year. Did he go back to Pittsburgh for a job?  I know, as I fantasized, he went back to retrieve buried treasure or something he hid in the apartment?  That’s my favorite fictional interpretation of the record.  So what is wrong with this record?  What has me worked up about this record you ask?

It is the address listed in the record. The address listed in the 1912 city directory is the same as 1902/1903 sources I have on file.  They lived at 2808 Spring Alley, Pittsburgh.  What are the odds that if Adam did go to Pittsburgh sometime in 1911 or 1912, that he would go to the address he lived at in 1902.  That he would get recorded as being a resident in the same house, 10 years later.

His occupation is different in the listings.  In 1903, he’s a laborer; the 1912 directory has him as a cleaner.  So just maybe, he was there after all.  There are missing pages in the online version of the directory for me to crosscheck by street name.  I am not even sure Pittsburgh used the same process as Detroit City Polk Directories.  In the Detroit directories, the streets were indexed in the back.  That index also listed the residents’ name.  A useful method in hunting an ancestor in a census, if cannot find them through an index.  I would like to surmise that this was a printer’s error.

Then again, there is a rumor that the last couple of children didn’t belong to Adam.  Some other man fathered those children.  That maybe Adam left long before 1917.

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