Treasure Chest Thursday~Genealogy Document From 30 Years Ago

Research in 1985 was much different than it is today. The 1st IBM PC, Model 5150  was released on August 12, 1981. It’s CPU was a model 8088 and the PC sported one or two 5 1/4 floppy drives. The large disk in the below photo is a 5 1/4 Floppy and the smaller disk is a 3 1/2 disk. There were no hard drives available when first released and there were no genealogy program.


Back then, genealogy was done at Courthouses, libraries and archives of our cities and state and by correspondence.  
Case in point is the 1920 Census abstract dated 7April 7, 1985. To obtain this document you had to write the Bureau of Census, who would then look for the entry and advise if it was available and the cost. Reponses sometimes took weeks to complete. The Form BC-655 is for the family of W. J. PURVIS [William Jasper Purvis].  


 

Compare this document to the actual census and you will see how incomplete the document really is to a researcher. Listing the wife, one son and adding “and family” doesn’t tell you a lot about the composition of William Jasper Purvis family.

Today, a quick search on my computers provides a “better” and more concise picture of the family composition.




When the request was submitted to the Census Bureau you can see that the request was for the census listing for one – Hooker M. Purvis and we got just what we requested. Hooker M. Purvis and his parents William Jasper and Fannie Elizabeth Nixon Purvis.

 
Don’t get confused with this family in the 1920 Census. C. C. Purvis is Claude C. Purvis son of William Jasper. Hooker Nixon Purvis is also as son of William Jasper. Pearl Purvis is the wife of Claude C. and the two young children are the children of Claude and Pearl Purvis.

Significant progress has been made in delivering digitized text to all of us at home. Still, as researchers, it’s important that a thorough search of all resources be made in our quest to document our ancestors. This cannot be done by sitting in front of a computer monitor in the comfort of our home. Follow your GPS [Genealogical Proof Standard].