Tying to sort a mess and find Lucia Lasedale Francisco's birthplace and parents.

Question

Hello, I'm trying to see if I can't get past a brick wall ancestor.  Her name is Lucia Lasedale and she was married to Benjamin Francisco. She is my 4th great grandmother.  Census records are all over the place: 1850 says Vermont, 1860 Says New York, 1880 says Canada with father's birthplace as New York and mother's as Vermont.  1900 Census says Canada with both parents being born in New York.  I don't know what to make of it.  Even the estimated years of birth are different on each census, some placing her year of birth as 1828 and others as 1832.  She appears to have married Benjamin Francisco in Monroe county, New York, but searching at my local genealogical library has brought up no marriage record for the county it was supposed to have happened in.  It's been a mess.  Would you be able to suggest where I should be looking for sources or even help me find where she was born and who her parents were?  It's been one of my most stubborn brick walls to get past.

As a note, I only adopted this profile a month or so ago because I noticed that it had been orphaned, so I can't speak to all the info on the profile.

Comments

I'm beginning to suspect that Lasedale wasn't her last name.  I am unable to find any record confirming the surname and a google search turns up nothing.

Answer 1

Hi Brad!  The discrepancy in the birth years is not really that much, considering!  I have seen census returns over the years where people only age 6 years in the 10 years between enumerations! And they live long enough to be in 4 to 6 enumerations as an adult!

If you can get any sense of who is giving the info to the census taker, you might know what to make of the different birthplaces.  For instance, by the time she is elderly, if she is living with relatives from one side of the family, they might know more about their side than the other side. For the 1850 census, she is still quite young.  If she is unmarried and not living at home, it might be an employer giving the info, and they might have a vague idea that she comes from Up North Somewhere.  If her current residence aligns with the info about her birth, it might just be that the informant didn't really know and figured she must be from Around Here Somewhere.  

Remember that neither the informant nor the enumerator had any idea we were going to be poring over these records trying to see into the past!

Good luck with it!

Cheers

Shirlea

PS - could you put some info and maybe links about those censuses in her profile?

Comments

Hi Shirlea,
I just put the censuses in her profile. I apologize for the long delay.  Things got a bit busy for me.  Thank you for your reply.  It does seem to explain a bit. The problem is, I'm not sure where to turn next in looking for info on her.

Thanks!

Brad

Answer 2

I'm still having trouble finding much on her, if anyone has any ideas.  I've added the censuses about her.

Answer 3

I'm beginning to suspect that Lasedale wasn't her last name.  I am unable to find any record confirming the surname and a google search turns up nothing.