Yesterday I posted about my experiences with the first day of the census and I mentioned that I had no plans to seek out my family members while the images are still unindexed. Yeah – that didn’t hold out very long.
Last night I downloaded a few ED sets from the NARA website around the Craven & Lenoir counties in North Carolina. My father’s family is from there so I was curious to see who I would see. I didn’t plan to search for anyone specifically, but rather to browse.
To my delight, I quickly found my paternal grandmother, Cora Mae (Lawhorn) Koonce!
She is living in ED 25-10, Craven County, sheet 8A. She is 7 years old, and thus, this is the first time she appears in the census. Her father William is 28, her mom Pearlie Mae is 27. Interestingly enough the family is enumerated as McLawhorn instead of their true name, Lawhorn.
Cora is accompanied by brother William (age 9), brother John Wright (age 5), and brother Randolph (age 1). This is the first census for all the children, as William & Pearlie were married in 1931.
Enumerated below William & Pearlie are Randolph & Mary Kilpatrick. These are Pearlie Mae’s parents.
Enumerated above William & Pearlie is another interesting family. George & Roberta Tew. George was the brother of a man named Oscar Spears Tew. Oscar was the great-grandfather of someone I work with here at Vanderbilt. Last year, while doing some research on his family tree, I discovered this connection to my ancestral home area and based on other records had speculated that my family must have known the Tews. I had no idea they lived next to each other!