Calling all
Genea-Musings Fans:
It's Saturday Night again -
time for some
more Genealogy Fun!!
Our mission from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing, is to:
1) How many people in your
country had your four grandparents exact last names at birth in the 1940 U.S.
Census? [Note, if you're playing and not in the U.S., pick an appropriate
database in your country.] What about your spouse's grandparents last
names at birth?
2) List each last name at birth and the number of persons in the 1940 U.S.
Census using an exact surname match.
3) Have you performed a
"one-name search" for any of those last names and added them to do
family tree?
Here's mine:
My four grandparents are: Hork, Sullivan, Johnston, Lancaster.
Hork = 292
Sullivan = 142,354
Johnston = 90,330
Lancaster = 18,212
I was not surprised by the total for HORK, but that is a
huge number for SULLIVAN, even more than JOHNSTON. Of course, if the name was
JOHNSON, it would certainly be higher.
My husband’s four grandparents are Gorrell, Davey, Nilsen,
Lundquist.
Gorrell = 1,703
Davey = 5,537
Nilsen = 2,044
Lundquist = 5,394
I really expected more GORRELL names than that. My husband’s
ancestor James Gorrell had 15 children with nine sons. That could create a lot
of offspring. I also expected NILSEN to be higher but perhaps many of the
families changed their name to NILSON or even NELSON. I was more surprised that
there were more LUNDQUIST names than NILSEN.
Since the HORK names were so small, perhaps I should try a
one-name study. Often when I find a HORK name and do some research, I find they
are from Russia and not Germany. My Hork family came from Westfalen.
Copyright © 2022 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.
That’s a lot of Sullivan’s.
ReplyDeleteCould your Horks have been Russian Germans? I never thought of that as a common ethnic group, but I have come across the term more and more often lately in my Rusyn research.
ReplyDeleteMy Horks came from Westfalen. The spelling of the name there was Horoch until about 1870s. I suppose it is possible that earlier generations moved to Russia, but it is also possible the Hork name from the Russian area morphed from another spelling. A one-name study might resolve that question.
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