Census

The Census assignment was my favorite assignment in class. We had to go through every census that was done during our ancestor's lifetime. I chose to look through each census during George H Spark's lifetime.

1860-In 1860 George would have been four years old. There were a lot of George Sparks's that came up when I searched his name through Ancestry.com, however I knew when I found the right one because his father was also named George Sparks and they lived in Queen Anne's county, Maryland.

1870-This census says that George is 15. Professor Summers warned us that sometimes census's are hard to read or the information could be a little bit off because at the time the sources of information weren't very reliable. I found that George did go to school that year and was the only one in his family who had done so. It said that his father's occupation was a farmer and his mother, Julia's, was a housekeeper. His older brother, William, also worked on the farm and he was 21. I found out that they had a slave living with them during this time. This wasn't uncommon in this area during this time period. Within the family an 11 year old black girl was listed as living with them who cannot read or write and her occupation was put as "servant".

1880-This census says George is still single. At this point he should be about 24-25 years old but the census now says he is 23. I am starting to notice the mistakes made by the census keepers however a year isn't a huge difference. This census page was hard to read, it looked like it had some water damage done to it. At this point the family also has a five year old nephew living with them as well.

1890-Unfortunately almost all of the census records were destroyed this year. Professor Summers told our class that one of the buildings flooded and the majority of census records from this year were ruined. The one's for Maryland were among the ruined ones.

1900-This is the census that told me his parents birth dates and marriage date. I noticed as the years went on that the census's became more and more detailed. I searched Mary Anne's name in this census and found that she was 39 years old and widowed. George somehow died young. She works on the farm, can read and write, and their five children, Lillian Hester Sparks Walls (1884-1962), Halsup Finley Sparks (1886 - 1951), Mary Bertha Sparks Walls (1888-1971), Julia Ethel Sparks Jester (1890-1980), Georgia Pearle Sparks Walls (1892-1977). It looks like three of the sisters married men with the last name Walls...Queen Anne's county isn't a very populated place. All of the children were buried in a cemetary in Cetreville, Queen Anne's county, Maryland.

I enjoyed the census assignment so much because it gave me the most information out of any other project we had to do for class. I didn't realize that George died so young and that him and Mary Ann really weren't married for a very long time.