1921 Census of Canada is Now Available! So That's Where Daniel Dickson Lived!

This morning I discovered on GOOGLE+ that the Canada census for 1921 has been made available.  I know it's indexed on Ancestry.com but I haven't yet checked any of the other"standby's" for delving into census records.

But here's the surprise for me.  I have always had trouble tracking down my maternal great grandfather.  His name was Daniel Alexander Dickson.  I know his father, James Dickson, and his mother, Mary Jane Clement, were both born in Scotland.   They came to Ontario sometime in the mid-19th century.  Daniel married Margaret Meagher whose father was born in Ireland, her mother in Ontario.



I searched for quite some time to find birth and death records for Daniel to no avail.  The first clue to Daniel's fate came when the 1930 US census was released in 2002.  I found Daniel's son, my grandfather right where he should be, living next door to where I lived for the first 7 years of my life.  There I found Clement, my grandfather, his wife, Hazel, my mother, Beatrice and my uncle, Clement, Jr.  at 34 Tyler Street, Springfield, Massachusetts.

Here's the surprise: Included in his household was his mother, Margaret!  She just happened to be visiting her son at the time the census was being enumerated.  Not only did I now know about when she was born, but I learned that her husband, the elusive Daniel, had died before 1930.  She declared herself a widow which may have something to do with why she was spending some time in Springfield with her son's family.  Her occupation was listed as "Gentlewoman"!

So here comes the 1921 Canada census.  The first person I looked for was Margaret as I knew she was alive in 1921.  But Margaret was the head of household.  Did her husband die before 1921? Possibly.  But I still took a shot at finding Daniel.  For reasons unknown to me so far, Daniel was enumerated in Quebec in the household of his son-in-law, John D Hobus.  John's wife was Frances, the third "Frances" born to Daniel and Margaret.  The first 2 died within a year of their birth.  Classic case of a "necronym".  The best guess I have for Daniel's date of death is sometime between 1921 when he was certainly alive and 1930 when Margaret declared herself a widow.  More research.

So now I've got a bug to get more information.  Sadly, anyone who may know has died.  Thus my urging of this generation to INTERVIEW YOUR FAMILY!!  "nuff" said about that!

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300"] The first-ever commercial radio station, WBZA, originally broadcast from Springfield, Massachusetts in 1921. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption]

Necronyms

How can one family have 3 daughters all of whom are named "Prudence"? Obviously, someone made a mistake. Well, probably not! The practice of necronyms was common in days of old. A necronym is the name of someone who has died. Using it often is a sign of respect.
If a daughter was born and named "Prudence", for example, but didn't survive, a subsequent daughter may be named after her for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the parents used the name to honor an ancestor of their own and continued to use the name even if the first born with that name had died. Finding 2 children with the same name in a family is more common than you think. Even 3 is unusual but obviously more rare. IT is common in some cultures but taboo in others.

(The practice of necronyms should not be confused with the manner in which George Foreman ("Big George") named hi five sons George....that's another story.)

But when you find a necronym, it may go like this: You find the birth year of a child of say, 2 years of age in a census but then in the next census 10 years later, find "her" again at age 4 rather than 12. Usually, with a little digging, you'll find that the first child had died and the parents used the same name for another child. It provides a pretty good clue that there are more children than what a census record may show. A related problem would be if a child was born the year after one census and died the year before the next, you may never realize that the child had ever existed!

Time to check church records for christenings!