06 / A changing home · Main Street → Sherwood Avenue · 1930–1940
A different address. Children growing older.
The family begins to reach beyond one household.
James McPadden & Catherine McNiff’s children · the Bridgeport branch
Follow them to SherwoodBackdrop: the actual 1940 household detail, enlarged and darkened—not a photograph of the home.
Two records locate a change
The census records the family renting here.
In 1940, the listed household members report the “same house” on 1 April 1935.
The later census names the parents and four of their children.
1935 is a date recalled in the 1940 census—not the moving day or a separate census. The date, reason and ownership remain unresolved; these records do not show that all seven people moved together or establish uninterrupted residence afterward.
Five siblings · two household records
Switch between the two records to see who is listed together.
The parents · listed in both recordsJames & CatherineCatherine McNiff McPadden, the mother—not their daughter Catherine. Written as “Katherine” in 1940.
Not listed hereHer circumstances remain unknown
Recorded age 25Listed with their parents
Recorded age 22Listed with their parents
Recorded age 17Listed with their parents
Recorded age 15Listed with their parents
Ages are transcribed as recorded, not calculated birthdays. Some do not advance by exactly ten years; the discrepancy is kept visible.
1940: six people listed—two parents and four of their children. Daughter Catherine is not listed in this household.
Catherine McPadden · their eldest daughter
Their daughter—not her mother Catherine McNiff or her aunt Catherine Kelly.
Catherine was recorded as seventeen in 1930. Ten years later, she is not listed with her parents and siblings.
That is where we need to follow her own records. Marriage, work or another home are possibilities—not conclusions this household page can supply.
An absence from one household is not evidence, by itself, of death, estrangement or a particular new home.
Ed remembers · family recollections
Decades later, these places were still part of the family conversation. Ed McPadden, the project’s founder and James’s grandson, shared these recollections in October 2026.
Ed remembers drives with his parents, when he was in early elementary school. On the way to Seaside Park, his father would point out the house where he had grown up.
Ed associates this memory with the Main Street home. The exact building and address match remain to be verified.
Ed recalls that his father lived at the Sherwood house as a young dentist and began his practice in a third-floor room. He also remembers the house’s later association with Aunt Cecil and Uncle Charlie Cullen.
This is Ed’s account of family history, not a claim that he witnessed the practice’s beginnings. Dates, ownership and the historical building match have not been independently established.
Recollections supplied by Ed McPadden, 16 October 2026; paraphrased with his approval for this story. They add a remembered connection, not a replacement for property or professional records.
Before we follow the next generation, one last record takes us beyond the family home—to James’s work at Beardsley Park.
The records securely place the household at Main Street in 1930 and at the same Sherwood Avenue house by 1935. They do not preserve the moving day, route or reason.
Time-and-evidence diagram · not a reconstructed travel route
James and Catherine are recorded with all five children in a rented home with monthly rent of $20.
No selected record yet gives the date, route, cost, reason or the family’s feelings about leaving Main Street.
The 1940 census records the listed household members as living in the same house in 1935, carrying the Sherwood residence backward five years.
The census directly records James, Catherine, Cecelia, James Jr., William and Edward at 67 Sherwood Avenue.
Our rule: two dated addresses establish an interval. They do not authorize us to write the missing moving day.
Compare two census nights ten years apart. The later page can show who shared the Sherwood household in 1940. It cannot explain the separate life of the daughter not listed there.
The mother is written as “Katherine” on this page. Daughter Catherine has no corresponding row in the selected household.
The household records show Catherine growing from a child into a young woman, then leave her separate path unresolved.
Sources that could help tell this person’s own story:
Our rule: absence from one household record is a research question, not a conclusion about a person’s life or relationships.
