As part of my clean-up process as I go back through the work I did as a “baby genealogist,” I am filling the gaps of easy-to-find records. The low-hanging fruit. The records that were perhaps not as easily accessible as they are now. Digitized censuses, newspapers, not to mention all of the fantastic records at FamilySearch.

When I started, the 1930 census had just been released to the public. It was a microfilm publication that you had to go to a library or archive to see, and crank; not digitized and available online. Today, we have the 1940 and 1950 censuses. AND they are often served up to us as nice little hints on Ancestry so there’s not even that much searching that needs to be done.

Well, until I get to Charles Urban. He was one of the sons of Andrew Urban and Barbara Haine. The family lived in Findlay, Ohio, but Charles moved up to Toledo, where he died in 1933. But I hadn’t yet found him in the 1930 census. And Ancestry wasn’t showing a hint for that 1930 census. I did some quick searches, using the slider bars to adjust for more or less exactness in terms of spelling and location.

Nothing. Hmmm…

Well, I knew that the Toledo city directories were online, so I checked in the one for 1930 to make sure Charles was indeed in Toledo in 1930. Sure enough…

His address is on 812 2nd St. I looked that address up on Google Maps so I could see the other streets it was bounded by. It is not far from the Maumee River, near Oswald St.

Using Steve Morse’s ED Finder tool I was able to determine that Charles should be in ED 144.

There are only 23 pages in that ED so I scrolled page-by-page. Finally, on page 19, I found him. He was indexed as “Walon” not Urban. I would have never found that using any of the wildcards and spellings I was trying. It does look like it starts with a W, but the rest is clear to me.

This doesn’t have much to do with my clean-up except to remind me to be persistent, diligent, and persevere. There’s usually a solution, even if it is going page-by-page.