Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Most Popular Date: November 20

Nancy over at My Ancestors and Me posted today about a popular date in her database, which just so happened to be today's date, October 9. She had 5 relatives who were either born, married, or died on this date. She asked her readers if they had a popular date as well. I had no idea, so I decided to do a little research.

First, I ran the Birthday and Anniversary List in RootsMagic. I saved it as a text file and then opened it in Excel. To separate the day/month from the year, I did some text-to-column work. Then I did a Pivot Table to see how many names showed up for each date. Of course, this did not have the death information included, so I created a custom report for the death dates of individuals in RootsMagic and then opened that in Excel as well. Creating the report was a little tricky because I had to figure out a way to tell the program to only include people with a full death date (i.e. not just a year). In the Search for Information box, I chose Death value is greater than or equal to 01 Jan. This seemed to do the trick.

My database has 4,149 people in it. The most popular date was....November 20! There were 19 birth, marriage, and death events that occurred on November 20. The second most popular date was March 5, with 14 birth and marriage events.

George HARGRAVE and Anastasie Aspasie TRAHAN were married 20 Nov 1829.
Edmond TRAHAN was born 20 Nov 1832.
Ursin Theomile PREJEAN and Adenysa LEGER were married 20 Nov 1854.
Wesley FINKLE died 20 Nov 1887.
Jules DOMINGUE and Adolphine BEGNAUD were married 20 Nov 1890.
Charles H. CHATTERSON was born 20 Nov 1891.
Lloyd Jay BASNEY was born 20 Nov 1892.
William J. CHATTERSON and Euphemia T. SPABEN were married 20 Nov 1900.
Felix TRAHAN was born 20 Nov 1901.
Jesse WARD and Rosanna Alphonsine PLONKEY were married 20 Nov 1909.
Leon A. CHATTERSON and Alma Albertine PLONKEY were married 20 Nov 1909.
Lillia TRAHAN was born 20 Nov 1912.
Eunice E. PEMBERTON was born 20 Nov 1919.
R.H.G. (living) was born 20 Nov 1945.
Cheryl Lee BERGERON was born 20 Nov 1947.
Chester Franklin FINK and Patricia U. KELLEY were married 20 Nov 1965.
G.A.P. and B.J.A. (living) were married 20 Nov 1971.
G.E.H. (living) was born 20 Nov 1978.
A.J.P. (living) was born 20 Nov 2007.

I will post more on each of these people, at least the non-living ones, at a later date. It will probably be several posts over a period of time. Thanks again, Nancy, for the idea!

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Semi-Random Birthday Research

I decided to do some quick random research today by looking for everyone in my database who was born on today's date, October 2, and list all the facts I have so far about them. I found two people. The first was Ruth CARNAHAN. The other was a living person, so I will not post anything about him here.

So, what do I know about Ruth?

1) She was the sister of my great-grandfather's brother-in-law. Ruth's older brother, Leo Clayton CARNAHAN, married Madeline Marion PEMBERTON, the younger sister of my great-grandfather, John Vital PEMBERTON. Ruth and Leo were the children of Joseph Lee CARNAHAN and Anna L. SCHEFFLER.

2) Ruth E. CARNAHAN was listed in the 1930 census in the home of her parents, Lee and Anna L. CARNAHAN, at 1518 Miller St. in Port Huron, St. Clair, Michigan. Ruth's age was given as 1y 5m in 1930. This would put her birth date roughly around Oct 1928. She was the youngest child of Lee and Anna. Her birthplace was given as Michigan. Her father was a truck driver for an oil refinery. 

3) Her brother Leo's obituary from 1984 lists her as Ruth GARDNER. Her residence was given as Port Huron.

2) I found a Ruth Y. GARDNER in the SSDI who was born 2 Oct 1928 and died 2 Sep 2010. Her last residence was given as Port Huron.

As I wrote this, I decided to see if I could find an obituary for the Ruth in the SSDI to see if she was in fact the same Ruth as the sister of Leo CARNAHAN. Sure enough, I was able to verify this at Legacy.com. Her obituary was published in the Times Herald in Port Huron from 3 Sep 2010 to 5 Sep 2010. If you would like to see Ruth's obituary, along with a picture, click here.

If you want further info about Ruth or her siblings, my cousin Steve CARNAHAN, son of Leo and Madeleine, has more info in his online family tree at Ancestry.com. Happy Hunting!