At 05:00 PM 10/4/98 +0200, Candace Biamonti wrote: >Hi to you all! > I have going over the few little piles that I have on this family of >mine that lived out a seemingly Peyton Place life in the little town of >Colbert, OK. > I would like to know if it is usual that the Census records record >different information for the same person. I have this Frank R. Standerfer >that in the 1900 Indian Territory Census is listed as being born Feb 1858 >in Mississippi along with his mother Sarah E. as being born Jan 1831 in >Mississippi. Then in the 1910 OK Census Frank R. is born in Ill in 1858 and >he is with his wife Ala (Edith Emola Kelley) born in Ill (this is true) and >they have a daughter born in TX Alta (my grandmother) and a son Fanky(Frank) >born in OK. This is not unusual. It could be a simple matter of: q: Where are you from? a: Mississippi q: Where were you born? a: Illinois. In the earlier censuses this is even more common, depending on how the census taker phrased his question and who he is talking to. Sometimes a really lazy census taker may not even get the information from the actual head of household or his wife, but a neighbor. > Is it normal to find this kind of confusion? I know that Edith Emola >and Frank met in Indiana or Ill. These two were married in Grayson Co. >Texas in 1894. This is because they could not be married in Oklahoma being >non-Indian? Pardon my ignorance, but how did they live on Indian land not >being Indian. My other great-grandfather married a part Indian woman and >they had lots of land. Did whites work the land like share-croppers? > My last question of the day is were there not laws about incestuous >marriages? I have Edith Emola's brother, Frank Kelley, marrying her >daughter, Mary Roberts, from her marriage to Mr. Roberts! > One more little question, did people all move around in those days like >this family did? These were coming and going from all corners of the USA! I think that it was extremely hard to keep track of anyone being a bigamist or marrying kin. I think the laws on marrying kin are actually quite recent. It was exceptionly common in the south. (hence the song: I am my own Grandpa). With my own line...my slimey worm that wont be trod is, in my belief, a bigamist. There is no other way to account for the birthdates and marriage dates of his kids. Many Indians leased their lands, some of the Indians had surplus lands they gave back to the government for money. some whites worked for indians, or were adopted by the tribe. Many people came up from Texas to IT JUST to get married or have kids to establish residency, so they could acquire permits to live here. Not unlike illegal aliens of today...the same rules apply. I ran across an item in the paper in my lookups the other day of a man who divorced his wife to marry her mother, so he was essentially at one time her husband and later her stepfather. Nalora