February 2 at 8:27pm This an update to a previous post. The previous post has been archived/or/deleted.
In two earlier post I said that it appeared that James and Myrtle didn't live IN Lockfield Gardens in 1940 because their address was too far south and Lockfield Gardens was an apartment building not a house. The census taker had listed the residence they lived in in a manner that indicated it was a house, single family dwelling. Or at least that's how it looked to me.
This week I restarted another round of back-checking:
- Back-checking is when I complete a phase of research, such as researching census records, I take all the collected research up to that point and verify it against the newly collected census data.
- I do that with every phase:
I started with researching the work of Frank Montgomery, and organized the information,
then I researched and processed Jo Ann’s collection of family pictures and went back through the Frank research and the Jo research and compared it, looking for information that did or didn't match.
Then I did a map research and back checked it against the Frank/Jo research.
I will repeat this process about ten times as I progress through different steps.
By the end of the research phase I will have rechecked every fact or assumption collected at least eight to ten times, and then will discard the information that can't be explained or verified by at least one other source.
So, to get to the point (hush-up out there!), this week I researched and back-checked the "Polk City Directories". The Polk directories are like the yellow pages and Phone books that existed before the phone was invented. Like the phone books they listed and advertised businesses. They also listed every house in the city and who was the head of the house in that year. The same way the phone book list whoever pays the bill (and their address) the Polk directory shows name, address, and sometimes occupation.
I am posting clips of the Census and Polk entries to explain my errors, nonetheless I am only willing to take 90% of the blame... I'm just saying.
Everyone in the Polk Directory is listed in at least 2 places: the alphabetic list and the by address. This is the alphabetic listing for Jas (James) and Myrtle at 901 Locke Street Apartment 571.
Remember I hadn't seen this when I was evaluating the information on the census.
This is the 'by address' list for James' address. Again I hadn't seen this before, once I stumbled upon it I realized my error. This is from 1941, James and Myrtle didn't have a phone then... the only one in the building that year belonged to apartment 544. Noticed how they distinguished that... anyone out there get the significance of the icon?
This is a 'mashup' of the 1940 census page. The top arrow points to the line #41 entry, '901/566'. The second arrow points to Mr. Williams entry on line #52. In this mashup it looks like Mr Williams entry is right under Line 41 and I shouldn't have missed the 901/566 entry, but in fact its 11 lines down the page. I cut and paste it right under the column headers.
But the real mistake wasn't that I missed the 901/566 address. I probably saw it and figured it was one of those private notation that census takers often make and that was my first mistake.
My second mistake was that I couldn't make out the critical notation in column 1. "apt", obviously for apartment. But this is a blow-up of the census form... on paper it was not easily read and the 'apt' was eligible.
My bad...
OK, here is the full story of the Williams family in Lockfield Gardens. (So far):
James & Myrtle were married in 1935. Sometime between 1935 and 1940 they moved into Building 901, apartment 571 of Lockfield Gardens. 901 Lock St. APT 571, Indianapolis, Indiana.
Their rent was $18 a month in 1940 when James was a Hotel Porter making $728 a year. Myrtle had just started a job as a waitress in a Restaurant. Both were 25 years old and 4 year old Roy was living with them. By 1942 they had a phone in the apartment and at the time they were the only ones in the building who had one. They lived in Lockefield Gardens until after the 1955 birth of Jo Ann. Before the end of the year they moved in with Myrtle's mother on Columbia. It appears Cheri, Dickie, James and Carl were all born while the Williams family lived in Lockefield Gardens.
