Holy hell. Ancestry.com has the 1930 census information up for free use for three days, so I thought “Hey, let’s look up my dad’s side of the family,” because we know next to nothing about them and wouldn’t it be nice to know something. How hard can it be to find them? Ha! Famous last words.

I’m going to have to email Ancestry.com and tell them their transcribers can’t read plain handwriting. My search would have been far more fruitful had they not misspelled the last name by one letter. It’s so obviously an “o” and not an “a” it isn’t funny.

Anyway, here’s what I found out:

Nat T. (48 y.o.) and Nola (38 y.o.) were married and living in Dobson Township, Arkansas (near Pitts) in 1930. They had a lot of kids. I never knew this. John Ray (my grandfather, not yet married to my grandmother – 21 y.o.), Fred D. (19.y.o.), Maurine (who I hear died young – 14 y.o.), Nelson (11 y.o.), and Dewie (5 y.o.).

They rented their home on State Highway XXXX (can’t read it), and they lived on a farm … and naturally, Nat was a farmer and the male children of reasonable age were farm laborers. They did not own a radio. Except for the 5 year old, they could all read and write, and they all spoke English. Every last one of them was born in Kentucky.

Though the census forms don’t say it, I happen to know the farm had cotton and rice and pigs. I also happen to know that though they may have been renting the farm in 1930, they had to be renting it from a family member. I know this because when I was a small child, there was a huge squabble over it when some old relative died. Thankfully, after making the trek to Arkansas to take part in the squabble, my parents just walked away from it all. What the hell did we need part of a run-down rice and cotton farm for anyway. When I find the photos from that trip, I’ll post them and you’ll see what I mean.

I now know more about my dad’s side of the family than I ever did before, and I still really know nothing at all.

It’s interesting to compare the census data for dad’s side with mom’s. Mom’s family were a bunch of German immigrants who owned their own home (and a radio – what an interesting thing to have on a census), didn’t speak English (but could read and write it — yeah, they spoke English, they just didn’t want to), and my grandfather worked as a bookkeeper at a tannery (which he bought just a few years after this census and owned until it burnt down — some drama there, as a rival and family member did the burning down supposedly). It’s pretty easy to tell who was doing better than whom, isn’t it? Funny that in the end, everyone ended up dirt poor.

Well that was a fun way to spend a few annoying hours, and now should I ever want to look further into the Blalock side of things, I have a decent starting point. Not that I didn’t know Kentucky was the root of all Blalocks. That place is THICK with them. I wish I could have found something about my grandmother Ethel Ruth, but even searching nationwide, I find nothing at all. Who knows what outback, in-the-woods sort of place they lived in. :D

And the “T” in my great-grandfather’s name? Tiberius. Yes, just like Captain Kirk. :lol:

UPDATE:

In 1931, Nat and Nola had another baby … Leslie Stanford. Nola’s maiden name was Walker. In 1900, Nat and his parents lived in Calloway, Kentucky.