posted by Anne Garcia

on January 24, 2007

May part of the census is the last 120 households and I also would use Ancestry.com for getting the census data and also re-checking information. I As I greet these people from the seventh ward in my mind, I cannot help but imagine how they looked, talked, what they liked and disliked. I wonder if I would have been friends with some of the girls my age or what my occupation would have been in Philadelphia. I also wonder how married couples met and how women deal with the loss of their children.

Among the households, there are several women who gave birth to more children than the number of their children that are alive at the time of the census. One woman, I remember is Anna Kearney who lives on 2411 Lombard, she gave birth to 14 children and only seven children are alive. I can only imagine what sadness she feels loosing her children.

I wonder if the two men that are next-door neighbors walk to work together since they are both watchman. One man was from Germany and I wonder if the American let him know of his job when he moved in next door. A few houses down on 505 S. 27th Street, there are three single women living together, one is a widow, and the other two women are sisters and are noted as single with no children. The widow gave birth to two children but only one child is living. This household makes me wonder how single women are viewed and the reasons why these two women are not married. My imagination runs wild and I think perhaps these women may have been jilted or perhaps they did not have a desire to marry.

Another curiosity finds me as I discover that on Tanney Street two men from Ireland came together to the U.S. and both share the same profession of nursing. These two men live as boarders in the same household. I wonder how long they have known each other and have been friends.

Later on as I make way down 505 Tanney Street, I find there are stepchildren in a household, two stepdaughters and a stepson in a family with two young children. This particular household catches my attention because I think this is the first family that is not nuclear. I wonder if the older daughter has to stay home to help her mother take care of her younger siblings. Another curiosity is where is her biological father? She did not have a job and I wonder if that family has the same dilemmas step families face today. The stepson was not in school and does not have a job. Did he help with the children too? The youngest stepdaughter who is 12 years old is in school. I wonder if the stepchildren get along with their two younger siblings and with their stepfather.