I have focused much of my family research on my paternal lines. But I thought I would track my maternal lines back through census records to see what I would find. So I'll start with my paternal grandmother Elizabeth (Suderman) Fast in the most recent census in which she appears.
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| Source: U.S. Census of 1940, Texas County, Oklahoma, Nabisco Township, e.d. 70-14, sheets 2B-3A, family #38, household of David D. Fast, lines 74-80 and 1, accessed online at ancestry.com, 20 October 2012. |
The first census to look at is the 1940 US census for Hardesty Township, Texas County, Oklahoma. She and her husband David D. Fast lived in a leased house for which they paid $5 a month in rent, what the family called the Rock House, since it had been built of soft chalk rock in 1881 by David Donaldson. Although there were two other families that rented for $5 a month, the Fasts were clearly living in one of the poorest houses in the neighborhood. (I believe this was the rent for the house, not the rent for the ranch land.)
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| Location of Fast ranch in 1940. |
Elisabeth was 47 years old, having been born in 1892 but not yet having had her September birthday in 1940.
David and Elizabeth had six children: Viola E. (14 years old), Rose E. (13), David E. (10), Harold E. (8), Mildred B. (7), and Jacob S. (6). The census records that Elizabeth had had six children and that all six were living at the census date. The census record can prompt interesting questions if we look carefully at the information. For example, why do the first four children have the initial "E"? I happen to know from my dad that each one was given a middle name starting with "E" in honor of his mother: Viola Elizabeth, Rose Ethel, David Ernest, and Harold Eugene in that order. But I don't know why that pattern changed for Mildred and Jake.
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| Elizabeth and her family. |
The census also records the birthplace of each family member. Elizabeth had been born in Kansas and was now living in Oklahoma, but she made a lot of moves in between that this census does not record. Also, notice that the children were born in different states. And there is a story with each one. Viola was born at home, on the farm southeast of Hooker, Okla. But Elizabeth decided she wanted to have hospital births after that, so Rose was born across the state line in Liberal, Kans. The plan was for David to be born in Liberal as well, but he came too quickly, so he was born at the farm near Hooker, Okla. Then Harold, my dad, and Mildred were born in Liberal, Kans., both according to plan. By 1936, the Depression was hitting very hard, and babies were dying of dust pneumonia; so the Fasts made a move to California that turned out to be temporary, which is why Jake was born there. But they were back near Hardesty by the time of the 1940 census.
Next we see a question about where the family was living in 1935 - it turns out to be the same house. If we look at the neighbors, we see that most of them were also living in the same house. It's possible people were moving away because of the Dust Bowl, but they certainly weren't moving to the area. In fact, based on family stories, I think most of these people had lived here for years, so it was a stable neighborhood with close-knit relationships. These were tough people who by 1940 had stayed through a decade of the worst that the Dust Bowl and Depression could deal out.
Finally, we should look at the neighbors, and there are many whose names I have heard: Jim and Anna Beasley, Fred Mayer, Jake Neff and his son Boss, George Oiler, Jula Wood, and Willard and Alta Mae Jones. But notice that there are no Mennonite names on the two pages where the Fasts appear - when the Fast family lost its farm near Hooker and had to move to a leased ranch near Hardesty, they moved far from their church community and into an "English" one. While David and Elizabeth remained staunch Mennonite Brethren church members all their lives, it took an effort to do so. And their children were the only Mennonites in the Hardesty school. They no longer did business in Hooker, Tyrone, and Liberal where their fellow Mennonites did business - instead they did business in Hardesty and Guymon where their "English" neighbors went. Their daily social ties were with "English" neighbors.
It is amazing the amount of information that can be pulled out of a census record, especially when there are family stories with which it can be correlated.
