Recapping Reports

 

To zero in on arrival dates for the immigrant Blaising family—all the brothers and the mother of my father-in-law's step-grandmother Theresa Blaising Stevens—I went back to the reports contained in the U.S. Census records. There, line items in the 1900 census, as well as the 1910 and 1920 enumerations, revealed at least what was reported by each resident in the United States.

Reports, of course, can be misleading. First, we need to rely on the enumerator hearing answers correctly, then writing them legibly enough for us to read. We also must hope that the enumerator gleaned his or her information from the source, not the neighbor down the street who was filling in while the hoped-for interviewees were away on an extended trip. Above all, we need to hope that the individuals themselves remembered and reported the correct answer. Otherwise, we are depending on answers as true which might be otherwise.

With those constraints in mind, here is what I discovered in all three enumerations, for Theresa's mother (before her 1907 death), her siblings, and her own report. 

According to Mary, the widowed mother, in the 1900 census she—or someone in her stead—claimed that she had arrived in the United States in 1868. This, of course, is not what was claimed in her obituary only a few years afterwards, but we will see how that report played out among her children's own census entries. Since she died in 1907, she was not found in any subsequent enumerations.

Henry, apparently the oldest son, also reported a 1868 arrival in the 1900 census, and noted that he was naturalized. However, ten years later, the 1910 census saw him change that immigration date to the 1866 date maintained by the family in his mother's obituary back in 1907. Once again, he claimed that he had been naturalized. Hoping to drill down to more detail in the 1920 census, I was disappointed to see some scribbled entries, overwritten by a clear "unknown" for both the date of arrival and the date of naturalization. Thus, Henry's entry doesn't provide us much help.

Next son Lawrence, who moved from Indiana to Albany, New York, appeared in the 1900 census with no arrival date and no information on naturalization status. By 1910, though, he reported arrival in 1866, and that he had been naturalized. Unfortunately, he died in 1918, so there was no way to follow him further in census records.

For next son Phillip, we run into conflicting data, which I suspect was partially owing to his own reports. Phillip, it appears, was married once in Allen County, Indiana, where his family had settled, but divorced and moved to Ohio, where he subsequently married and raised a second family. However, in later census reports, his age given and statement that he was married only once would have made me doubt I had found the right person, except that his residence in Ohio was reported in his mother's obituary. Nevertheless, in 1910, he reported arriving in the U.S. in 1876, and in the 1920 census, he claimed arrival in 1870 and naturalization in 1880, despite also stating that he was born in 1869 (while the 1870 census showed his age then as eight).

Son Louis was another Blaising child whom I couldn't find in the 1900 census. However, in 1910, he claimed arrival in 1866, though no word about whether he had been naturalized. In the 1920 census, he again mentioned arrival in 1866, and naturalization in 1876. Considering that the 1870 census had shown him to have been born about 1861, I tend to doubt that date of naturalization.

Son August was found in all three census reports, though in the 1900 census, all immigration information was left entirely blank. In the 1910 census, he referred to that same arrival date as many of his brothers: 1866. He also reported having been naturalized. But in the 1920 census, he switched the arrival date to 1868, and claimed naturalization in 1886.

Theresa herself included some variations from those dates given by her brothers, but that could possibly be due to reports actually being provided to the enumerator by her husband. In the 1900 census, she gave her arrival date as 1867, though in the 1910 census, she revised that date to 1866; there was no report of naturalization, but depending on the timeline of naturalization requirements for women, her marriage to an American citizen may have obviated such a need. Yet in the 1920 census, while keeping the 1866 arrival date, there was an entry on naturalization given as 1876 which was overwritten, making it unclear.

With the exception of the one brother, Phillip, dates given for arrival vacillated from 1866 to 1868. We can see from the siblings' mother's original entry that perhaps everyone followed suit—or perhaps by the time of Mary's death, the family gathered together to rebuild the family history in agreement. Variance in naturalization dates would be due to each person's own date for going through the legal process. Some may have started as soon as possible; others might have waited to begin the multi-year process.

At any rate, those dates will form a "ballpark" range for the next steps in the process. While I will want to seek out naturalization records for each of the Blaising brothers to glean details to guide me to their home town in Europe, I will need to also find passenger records or some sign of how they arrived in the New World. For that, we'll need to revisit our work from earlier this week just one more time.