Have you ever done research on the internet and was lead onto a long series of tangents depending on what you found? I have many times, sometimes the search attempt leads to nowhere, but other times I’ve discovered more information than I could have ever imagined.
Tom DeVarney is one of the Vermont Genealogy Library’s (VGL) very knowledgeable researchers. While Tom was doing an online search for an individual in the census records of Wisconsin he used some wild cards search criteria in the name field but came up with too many possibilities. So he added “born in Canada” as another search parameter and was surprised at the results. This lead him to wonder how many possibilities he would find for people that were “born in Vermont.” The chart below lists the results of his query.
Vermonters & Canadians in the Great Lake States
Using the United States Censuses for 1850, 1860 & 1870| STATE | Census 1850 Born in Vermont | Census 1860 Born in Vermont | Census 1870 Born in Vermont | Census 1850 Born in Canada | Census 1860 Born in Canada | Census 1870 Born in Canada |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Illinois | 11,658 | 18,780 | 18,173 | 10,442 | 20,124 | 32,268 |
| Indiana | 3,357 | 3,553 | 2,953 | 1,985 | 3,269 | 5,024 |
| Iowa | 1,718 | 7,621 | 12,209 | 1,759 | 8,279 | 17,624 |
| Michigan | 11,414 | 13,904 | 14,694 | 14,022 | 36,848 | 89,139 |
| Minnesota | 100 | 4,279 | 8,605 | 662 | 7,649 | 20,409 |
| Ohio | 15,269 | 11,790 | 9,494 | 5,951 | 6,950 | 13,228 |
| Wisconsin | 10,595 | 19,560 | 18,173 | 8,481 | 17,662 | 25,656 |
There are a LOT of Vermonters and Canadians who moved West and settled in the states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin between 1850 and 1870.
Sometimes it’s worth going out on a tangent.
PS If the Vermont and Canada descendants of these 7 states ever need help finding your ancestors VGL can help.
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