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Author: clementsll
Surnames: JOHNSON, VIGGEN
Classification: queries
Message Board URL:
http://boards.rootsweb.com/localities.northam.usa.states.nevada.counties....
Message Board Post:
Johnny,
I really sympathize -- I have a great great grandmother who we just can't identify
past her first name, and here in Dayton, Nevada, we have several people who were very
important to our early "first settlement in Nevada" history that we've had
an awful time tracing. Recently we found one of our elusive founders -- discovering that
what we thought was his first name was in fact his middle name! Also, my ancestors had a
bad habit of giving a slightly different first name at each census, and some also seemed
very unclear on their age from census to census. (More often men that women, so I
don't think it was vanity!) Also, if Sivert had a Norwegian accent, who knows what the
census taker would write down? Hurrying, they often just guessed at the spellings of names
anyway. Even worse, if Sivert was single and lived in a boarding house, for example, the
information may have been given to the census taker by someone besides himself who took
wild guesses at age, etc.
Here are some other things to consider. Both railroad and mine workers moved around a lot,
esp. if not married. They often went where the work was. Sivert lived during a time when
railroads were both growing and shrinking, often due to the mining in the area, which is
always boom/bust. So he could have moved around a lot, even if he did settle for some time
in western Nevada or even if he considered Nevada his "home of record." The West
was full of both mines and railroads in that era, so a lot of places needed workers while
many others were laying them off.
Any guesses you might have at alternatives for his first name might help. (For one thing,
you might go say "Sivert" to an American-born friend and see what types of
mistaken versions he or she can come up with. I couldn't even guess how a western
American census taker would have interpreted a Norwegian name!)
Good luck to you! We'll help if we can!
Linda Clements
Dayton, Nevada
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