Methodology Monday with shared addresses in Philadelphia

Do you check the whereabouts of friends, associates, and neighbors in the censuses and forget the cemeteries?

"Cemeteries are neighborhoods too." That staying has stuck in my mind ever since I first heard it from Elissa Scalise Powell. It could be the tagline for Kay Haviland Freilich's article in the March 2014 National Genealogical Society Quarterly identifying the parents of Philadelphia native Harry Harding (1852-1894).

The 1860 census provided a hypothesis as to Harry's parentage. But it might have remained a hypothesis if Freilich had not found a significant cemetery discrepancy. Harry, his wife, and two children are buried in one Philadelphia cemetery. But their first (stillborn) son is buried elsewhere -- in the same lot as Harry's hypothetical parents.

Read the whole thing, including an elegant two-page table of joint locations of various family members between 1850 and 1906 that support the connection.




Kay Haviland Freilich, "A Family for Harry Harding of Philadelphia," National Genealogical Society Quarterly 102 (March 2014): 11-20.

Harold Henderson, "Methodology Monday with shared addresses in Philadelphia," Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog, posted 28 April 2014 (http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com : viewed [date]). [Please feel free to link to the specific post if you prefer.]