Kim,,

It is I who should be apologizing. I noted that you were new and got in a hurry and forgot to give additional information that would have helped. First of all the census fields:

1. the 8/8 stands for Dwelling # / Family #. When the census enumerator started the list the first place he came to was 1/1 and so on. In some earlier censuses, these numbers were for the whole county, in later ones, each township was numbered separately. This may have been because they had more than one person doing the work. Anyway, it gives you a relative position in the census for looking for the family should you ever need to go back.
2. The date, 8 Jun 1870, is the day the census record was made for that family. It’s nice to have and does serve a purpose occasionally in helping to determine ages of people. In this case its only nice to have.
3. The number following the name is the age.
4. The next field is sex.
5. The next field is occupation, but this is not filled out for everyone and is often blank.
6. The last filed is the birthplace of the individual.

 

There are other fields in the census that I do not include. They are sometimes of interest but have no genealogical significance.

 

Birth certificates: You will be somewhat disappointed to find out that the States did not enforce by law the recording of births until the 1900’s. For Illinois it was about 1916. Some counties did collect births prior to that but kept them poorly and haphazardly. Same applies for deaths. However, burial/death records were much better preserved and sometime give the birth date as well. While it is not considered a primary source for births, it may be the only source.

 

Here are the death records for Daniel and Josephine:

 

From Cemeteries of Brown County, Illinois

Ripley Cemetery, pp. 313-331

Daniel W. O’Neal, Corp. Co. 16^th Inf., d. 29 Jul 1906

Josephine O’Neal, d. 19 Mar 1914.

 

Several of their children are buried here too.

 

 

Here is the marriage information and you can get a notarized certificate from the county for this. Last I checked it was $5. Here’s the url for this resource: http://www.cyberdriveillinois.com/GenealogyMWeb/marrsrch.html

Groom                         Bride                                        Date                 Book/page Entry          County

ONEAL, DANIEL W   BUTLER, JOSEPHINE       07/03/1867  C  /56   707      BROWN              

 

I hope this helps you a little. The burial entries did not provide  birth dates as I had hoped but at least you can calculate the year of birth from the census. They also should have obituaries in the local newspaper that might give their birth dates. The Versailles Area Historical and Genealogical Society has a collection of  obituaries and you should be able to write them and request the obituaries for them. I do not know if they charge for the service. You can get their address from the Brown county Webpage.

 

Sincerely,

Ken Huffman

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Kim [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2004 1:13 AM
To: Ken and Laurie Huffman
Subject: Re: Brown County (1870 Census Index)

 

Sorry that I am new but what do these numbers mean?  Can I find a birth certificate from these?