52 Ancestors 2022: Week 4: Curious

Originally, I wrote this blog in November of 2021 just to chronicle how I went about finding Owen Koonce in the census. It took some real sleuthing and deciphering. When I noticed the week four prompt was "curious," I decided to repurpose this post for that because, let's face it, "Koonce" being transcribed as "Wacek," that's pretty curious in my book, isn't it yours? 

So follow along here of how I discovered "Wacek" to be Owen Lawrence Koonce.

For pretty much the entirety of Henderson County - and even other areas I have family and have researched extensively - the 1880 census is absolute trash in quality. Most pages look like they were filled out by a 2 year old and scanned onto Ancestry by a 3 year old. That's even being kind about it.

For some odd reason, all the pages look smudged, cut off, and crooked. I wish I understood why. I really wish I had a proper explanation as to why the 1880 census looks so horrible (maybe I'll Google it later) but for right now, I don't. Sometimes, pages worth of the 1880 census aren't even transcribed on Ancestry, because you honestly cannot read it. 

Unless you had the physical copy of it and used a magnifying glass, you can't transcribe it, and not in the least bit transcribing it accurately. So Ancestry's auto-transcription is totally useless, and so are those of us who try and help Ancestry along by transcribing and fixing errors. We do the absolute best we can.

Sometimes, other decades of the census look like complete garbage, too. I've seen a few pages of the 1850, 1860, 1870, and even 1900 be unreadable. This particular instance pertains to a couple pages of the 1900 census here in Henderson County. 

The person I was working on back in late August was Owen Lawrence Koonce. Owen was the first of many Owen's to come in his family line. He was born to Wendell Koonce and Nancy Woods on December 29th, 1819, in Tennessee; perhaps the Rutherford County area. 

On June 11th, 1841, in Rutherford County, he married Miss Arrena Sims. By the 1850 census, they're living in Wilson County, TN, and by the 1870 census - they're in the Cairo area of Henderson County, Kentucky. They truly became the patriarch and matriarch of the Henderson County Koonce's. 

Arrena and Owen are both buried out in the Gibson Cemetery. Going with dates on their tombstones - I know Arrena died in 1889. But Owen's supposed death date on his tombstone is November 11th, 1907. Well - his tombstone is difficult to read. It's in desperate need of some tender love and care. I couldn't for the life of me find him in the 1900 census, so I had started to wonder if he died in 1897, instead. Maybe someone had transcribed his tombstone wrong (originally transcribed in the 1960's.) 

I decided to give it one last try to find him and this time, not by the name Owen or the last name Koonce. I restricted Ancestry's search perimeters to "Exact location: Henderson County, Kentucky," and for anyone born within 5 years of 1819 in Tennessee. 

I started going through the matches and curiously found one transcribed as just simply: Wacek. Hmm, Wacek. That sounds Russian or something. Could it be an indentured servant? Could it be a foreign relative? Henderson doesn't have many Russian families, but we've got lots of German ones. Maybe Wacek is a German first name. Curiously enough though, it says that Wacek was born about 1820, in Tennessee, and his parents hailed from North Carolina, and that he's widowed. 

Well by golly, Wacek, you match the description of Owen Koonce. Wacek's name is towards the top of the page, so the head of household is on the page before it. Flipping to the page before, it's slightly more legible and sure enough, the head of household is John Beverly Gibson, Owen's son-in-law. So he was living with his son-in-law and daughter, Sarah Jane (Koonce) Gibson. 

Going back to the page Wacek is listed on... you really can't even make out anything. I don't think what it says is even remotely close to 'Wacek.' It probably says, "Koonce, O.L." or "Koonce, Owen," and I can only imagine Koonce could be spelled wrong. I've seen it as Koontz, Counce, Coontz, etc. 

Satisfied with my findings though, I edited "Wacek" to "Koonce, Owen," and left a note that the transcription was wrong, and the image is down right unreadable. 

Ultimately, Owen, you're lost no longer in the 1900 census. 

As you can see, his tombstone is in desperate need of some gentle (but very thorough) cleaning. I've bought some D/2 over the Christmas holiday and plan to get out to my ancestral cemetery for some cleanings very soon. I'd have been out there this week (third week of March) but I've been down with E. Coli, unfortunately. Maybe next week!