farewell my beloved brunette, i embrace your knees

(April 2010, Shaun and I sitting on the porch of our house that was built around 1920.)

Figured out who lived in our house in 1940 from the census. A man named John, born in New York, (his listed occupation is superintendent at a coal mine, but we don’t have a coal mine! So I am guessing he was retired and had worked in another state. He had grade 6 listed as his highest level of school completed and he was 59) his wife Lillian (4 years high school, aged 55), his daughter Esther (4 years college, aged 28), a public school teacher, both born in Kansas and a lodger, Joseph (4 years college, aged 24) who was a chemist, born in Essex, Massachusetts and living there during the last census. I have already written in my head a love story between the school teacher daughter and the chemist lodger. So adorable!

ETA: I found this after I had already gone through a bunch on nonsense figuring it out myself, but this is super useful: http://gawker.com/1940-census/