How Regina was the Key to Identfying the Smith Family - Part I

In previous entries I introduced you to Regina Smith, youngest daughter of Charles and Eva Smith, youngest sister of Katie Cook, who was counted in two censuses in 1900. She lived with the Cooks and the Evers for almost 30 years as a maiden aunt/housekeeper/seamstress.

Regina was a cipher, really. She had no husband, no children, no job outside domestic duties to her niece and sister (which was surely voluntary). She left her home and family in PA at age 30 to live in Cleveland with a sister with whom she did not grow up, and a niece whose husband and she were the same age!

We know Katie Smith had left home before Regina was even born in 1870. We find Katie in the Sprigg household in Maryland, and we don't find Regina at all. Regina does not exist in the 1870 census, even though she was born June 2 of that year. We learned later that children born after June 1st are not counted in that year's census. If she had been born one day earlier, I would have saved hours of searching! Fortunately she does appear in the 1880 census with her family in Somerset County, PA listed as "Virginia M. Smith" when her name is actually Regina G. Smith. Fun, fun, fun with the idiotic census-takers. (Oh, you have no idea.)  Regina Smith appears in censuses as Virginia M. in 1880, Ragina L. in 1900, Raeina in 1910, and finally, correctly as Regina in 1920. Never mind that her age is listed differently in every census.

These are the kinds of challenges you face in genealogy, and you have to be a bit of a masochist to bother with it at all.

Regina had two sisters and three brothers much closer to her age than Katie, and step-brothers and sisters from her father's marriage to Second Hand Liz. Why would she move 300 miles away in 1900? It wasn't as if she hopped on Amtrak. This was not an easy thing to do. We know she lived with her older brother, Alphonse (who was three years older) between 1890 and 1900 (wish we had that 1890 census!), because he counts her in the 1900 one even though she has already moved to Cleveland. He, Regina and their step-sister Rosa Baldwin (Second Hand Liz's daughter) are living in their father's house. Charles Smith had died in February of 1900 - maybe that's why Regina flew the coop.

So here is this odd duck, born the 11th of 12 children in the late 1800s, having lost her mother when she was nine, growing up in a farming family, competing with nine siblings, with a step-mother and her children competing for the resources. Why didn't she get married? That's what girls in 1900 did long before age 30.

Perhaps Regina was unattractive or perhaps she was handicapped in some way; after all, her mother was 40 when she gave birth to her, and in 1870 that was not any less risky than today. Frankly, I would have stabbed Charles Smith with a pitchfork by then, but that's just me. Then to lose her mother at an age like 9; well, who knows how that impacted her if she were not up to par in the first place.

Whatever the reason, Regina moved to Cleveland and appears in the 1900 census in her niece Anna's home, identified as a "aunt" to the head of household. When I first found her living there, I was confused. First of all, she is listed as "Verginia", and age 30, the same age as John Evers. How could she be Anna Evers' aunt if she's the same age? Then, ten years later she appears in the 1910 census in the household of Joe and Katie Smith, listed as "Raeina" Smith, b. 1872, identified as a sister-in-law. A sister-in-law 20 years the junior of his wife. We thought she must be  the scandalous out-of-wedlock baby of Katie Smith! By 1910, the only child still living at home was St. Lulu, at age 23, and she, like Regina, never married. All the Cook boys were living on their own, although Delbert and his children would move back in by 1920. So we have St. Lulu, an old maid at age 23, and the mysterious Regina, a *really* old maid at age 40. Is it more likely they are long-lost siblings or aunt-niece?

Before I knew most of the above information, my search for Katie's parents continued. After learning she was born in PA, but married a man who was living in MD, I searched for the names Catherine "Smith" and "Schmidt" born in 1852 in PA but living in MD. Remember, the name Catherine Smith was pretty darn common! I found all sorts of possible results in Maryland, but one particular family caught my eye and looked good for it: a delightful family in an 1870 census in Maryland headed by George Smith, born in Hesse Germany in 1820, wife Elizabeth, sons Henry, Jacob, Albert and daughter Catherine born 1852 in Pennsylvania. Perfect! Yes, there was one small problem - no "Regina" or "Virginia" in the family, but she doesn't exist in 1870 in any census I can find, anyway, so I ignored that small problem. That omission only served to fuel the speculation that she was a child of Katie's and not her sister!

I followed the Smith family around for a few decades while they lived in Taneytown, Maryland. Elizabeth Smith was born in Pennsylvania, according to the census, so I tried to find her parents, thinking we might yet find another PA pioneer in the family.

Throughout the study of the George and Elizabeth Smith family, I was not satisfied with that result. There was that niggling issue of this Virgina/Regina person. She would not let me rest! She was a loose end I had to connect!

(to be continued)