The Blog

At the encouragement of someone I had met recently, I found myself looking at ancestry.com. Such a site is truly a gold mine of information when you subject yourself to confirming all of your forebear’s birth, death, and, if possible, marriage information. In seconds, you can see the records of US censuses from 1920-1950, draft cards, and photos uploaded by distant cousins of great grandparents.

In the brief time that I spent going down a rabbit hole on a Wednesday evening as the green leaves (if you know, you know) on my digital family tree were proliferating, I decided to focus in on the life of my dad’s father. He was one who I paradoxically knew much, yet, whenever I tried verifying anything, seemed to know very little about. He had claimed to be on the baseball team of the USS South Dakota for example. However, when I found a photo of the team, I could not find anyone resembling him. I knew he had served (someone had come to present a flag at his burial) and that he had worked for the government, but I wanted to know more about the true details of his story.

There were parts to this story I thought, that were more verifiable. I had recalled a few truths that were passed down over the years: my great grandfather was a foreman (this could be verified in the 1930 census). I recall my grandfather stating that he made around $50 a week in 1930. This compensation was well above the pay of an average laborer. I had also recalled that my grandfather did not graduate from high school, instead, opting to join the workforce around age 16.

With this in mind, I looked at the 1940 census. There, I could see what my grandfather was doing for work and get a glimpse into the life of someone who opted to put themselves to work as the country “went back to work” in the late ’30’s. Here I saw something profound, the income of each individual who earned money in that year. No census, before or since, has taken this initiative. At the time, it was argued that details on living standards were needed for each household due to the effects of the Great Depression and the job title + hours worked per week + weeks worked was not sufficient.

Even more profound than the census format itself was what I found next: my grandfather and great grandfather were employed by the same copper refinery. In 1940, my great grandfather, however, was no longer a foreman, but instead a ‘Laborer.’ My grandfather assumed the title ‘Watchman.’ Both men, made the same wage of $21 dollars per week, slightly below the national average of the time. However, my grandfather 20 earned more than my great grandfather at 45 due to him working a full year. At 20, my grandfather was the highest earner in his household.

Afterwards, in the draft cards, and censuses that I pored over, I saw my great grandfather and great-great grandfather go from job to job, apartment to apartment slowly going from gigs of laborer to part-time counter clerk as their bodies enabled it, I reflected on the life that my grandfather must have seen and been told about. One where the “opportunity” to proudly buy that Chevy for $800 and leave the neighborhood once in a while or live in a better apartment could slip away in hard economic times or if you suffered injury on the job.

For me, I could see the part of the story pick up and see the upward mobility in the census data. While on paper in 1950 it said he was a Bank Teller, working 35 hours per week, I was aware that in truth he was working part time while taking college courses. These qualifications would ultimately land him a position as a bank examiner, which he kept for nearly 40 years. In the coming decade, he would move to New Jersey, and live in the same home for 40 years. These numbers are not merely biblical in their amounts, but symbolic of “making it.” As long as he worked hard, they knew where their paycheck would come from. As long as he had a paycheck, he knew where he would be living. This kind of stability had eluded so many of mine, and his ancestors who had come to America seeking a more stable life than the one they had left behind.

While I have more to find on the ancestry tree, I come away from my first dig with a new appreciation for the “Greatest Generation” who saw the struggles of the depression and for whom “enough” was “stability.”