Cambridgeport History Day was this past weekend and part of that event is a week long walking tour called "If This House Could Talk." The event encourages residents to research the history of their homes and write a sign sharing something about their house for others to read. This is a fun way to get everyone involved and raise awareness of the rich history of our neighborhood.
In the past, I've focused my signs around how and where I got information that helped me restore the exterior of my house to its original condition. This year, I decided to write about one the house's longest residents Jennie T. Ray.
For those of you that have been around from the beginning of my blog, I wrote a post on how I used old maps and Ancestry.com to learn about the people that lived in my house before me. You can find that post here. And since the 1940 census was recently released, there's a lot of new information available.
I do have an update to that story though. In my old post, I wasn't sure if Jennie's daughter Frances survived. In the 1880 census, Jennie had one daughter Frances and in the next census, Jennie indicated that she had had two children but one had died.
When I searched for Jennie recently on Ancestry.com, I found her attached to someone's family tree. I contacted that person and found Jennie's great great great granddaughter Sheena. Frances married, had eight children of her own, and lived just a few blocks away.
Despite Jennie's many hardships, it was some nice closure.
