Census Revelations

In the months that followed, I capitalized on sporadic periods of leisure time to pursue and refine my new pastime of Banks family genealogy. I enlisted with hundreds of other subscribers at Ancestry.com, in gleeful concurrence with their modest monthly fee.  A multitude of powerful research instruments were suddenly at my command, and I took full advantage of their attributes. 

I consulted the 1850 U.S. Federal Census, which corroborated many of the details concerning the Banks family, with which I was already acquainted. 

The 1860 Census listed Cynthia Banks, Farmer (56), and five of her sons: Henry (22), Egbert (20), (yes..."Egbert") William (19), George Fox (17), and John J. (13).  They were all residing in Mercer County, IL, just as Henry’s Civil War Detail Report had mentioned. Though my great-great grandfather, David Irish Banks was mysteriously absent, I found him a few pages, and 20 miles away, living in Monmouth, IL with his wife, my Great-Great Grandmother, Mary, and their 6 year old daughter. Their son, who would be my great grandfather Willus David Banks wouldn’t appear on the scene for another 13 years.

The 1870 census had been recorded five years after the Civil War came to a close. Yet, it featured Henry, who had apparently remained single, and was now a 30 year old farmer, living with younger brother, John J. (23) and mother, Cynthia, now 65 years old, in the Elm Creek township of Saline County, Kansas. Curious as usual, I entered this new location in the search field at EPodunk.com, which is a search engine that lists just about every community known to man, from the most obscure dot on the map, to the most heavily populated metropolis. EPodunk.com listed Elm Creek as a community in the Salina metro area. Subsequent research for historic photos impressed upon me Salina’s similarity to Hill Valley, California, which was the fictitious location for the film, “Back to the Future”. The Classic Revival style courthouse even sported a nearly identical clock upon its façade, beneath the steeply pitched peak of its roofline in the early days. Shortly after the Civil War, the Kansas Pacific Railroad opened up a direct route to the Salina area, bringing in settlers from all directions. Salina had survived a brief stint as a cattle-trading post, which the city’s website described as follows:

POSTCARD: Salina, KS abt 1915
cardcow.com

The businessmen had expended a good deal of money to secure the trade that would be derived from the town being made a trading point for cattle, but having secured it, the people soon discovered that it was not such a desirable thing to have after all. The trade in itself was good enough, and the business of the merchants in town was greatly increased thereby, but the town became infested with such a crowd of disreputable character,  both male and female, that whatever advantage was gained in  trade was more than counterbalanced by loss in morals. When the cattle trade moved westward two years afterwards, the citizens of Salina were more than rejoiced at its departure than they were at its coming. Salina was a mill town and a trading  center, and that’s the way they liked it. 

I couldn’t picture Henry rubbing elbows with the rustlers, cowboys and outlaws of the Old West, but I could easily imagine him and brother John loading up the wagon, and “goin’ to town” for supplies, or to “dicker” with brokers over the best price for a bushel of their wheat and alfalfa. 

Fishing for more information, in the 1880 Federal Census I found Henry Ira Banks, 42 tending a farm in Pleasant Valley, Kansas. I was amused by the coincidence that I was presently the same age. Listed in the same household was Henry’s wife, Tilla, 48 and a live-in German-born laborer, Theadore Siffens, 23. Henry’s younger brother, William was living just a few doors down. The story was beginning to unfold, page-by-page before my eyes, and I was happy for Henry that he had finally married, though no children were listed. I assumed that since he and his wife were in advanced years, a family was not part of their equation.  Tending a farm in the 19th century was thirsty work, and a brood of strapping sons was the hope of most hard-working agrarians in those early days. I hoped that by some enigmatic swing of providence, that the 1890 Census would disclose evidence that might provide a path to a descendant to whom I might pass Henry’s bible.

I had already established that Henry hadn’t survived the 1880’s, and that he would not be mentioned in the 1890 census, but I was hopeful that his widow’s movements in the next decade might possibly offer some clues as to whether or not he had an heir. To my displeasure, Ancestry.com delivered the following blow: 

Some said it was a cigarette. Some said it was a conspiracy. But no one really knows for sure what started the fire on January 10, 1921, that destroyed a large portion of the 1890 U.S. federal census.  What everyone agrees on is this: it was a tragedy of immense proportion.  The census, with critical historical information on more than 6 million people in the U.S., was being stored in the basement of the United States Commerce Department. The other census records were inside a fire- and water-proof vault when the flames started, but the 1890 census was sitting just outside its protective walls.  Firemen rushed to the scene to put the fire out, but what wasn’t already destroyed by fire and smoke was drowned in water: 25% was said to have been destroyed by the flames; 50% by the smoke and water that followed it.  And what happened to the remaining 25%? Most of it was shuffled around from place to place until it was finally destroyed in the 1930s.