Birth Record Mystery

With preparation for the boys’ school year, I have neglected my genealogy research a bit and hence this blog. But I return with a mystery. As I said, I am at the beginning of this lovely genealogy and family history journey and so I am trying to locate and add all of the documents I currently have into my Roots Magic and Ancestry.com.

Growing up, my mother always said her dad’s origins were somewhat a mystery but she believed he was born in Argentina.  So I went to photograph a copy of my mom’s birth certificate and it says the birthplace for my grandfather is Argentina S. America.  However, I have conflicting census information for him. In the 1940 US Census, it states that his birthplace is Texas. I have no information about when he might have arrived in this country if that is his birthplace. I have started searching on ancestry.com to see if I can find birth information in the state of Texas for my grandfather. But I am hitting a wall.

 

As you can see, I am still trying to find some organization to my approach to my research. So what I am going to do before I go any further is use the advice of Crista Cowan, the Barefoot Genealogist in her YouTube video, How to Research Like a Professional. So I will create a research plan for my grandfather, James Buntin.

In Crista’s video she outlined 5 things for a Research Plan:

1. Identify what you want to know and be specific. For me, I want to find out when and my grandfather James Buntin was born.
2. What do you already know? Not much. I know his name, that he lived in Andover and was married (?) to my grandmother Anna Daguilar Buntin. (I don’t actually have a marriage certificate), according to the 1940 US Census he was 66 years old. According to my mother’s birth certificate, he was a Laborer (in 1932) when he was 58 years old., However in the 1940 Census it appears he was not working because he did not list anything.  That is pretty much all I know.
3. How do you know this? (i.e. Census, birth records etc.) Then Crista says to keep going back to number 2 and 3 until I have everything documented before I jump to #1 (What I want to know). So I need to seek out marriage docs and maybe some type of employment info.
4. Then think about where you can possibly find what you want to know. Think of all of the possible documents that might list info. e.g. death certificate, military records, marriage records, newspapers, more census. Keep notes so you can see the holes.
5. Do the records exist? If so, where?

So I am going to continue to work out this information to the best of my ability so I can solve this mystery once and for all.

Happy researching!!

Belinda