67 Sherwood Avenue · Bridgeport · 1940
Cecelia, James, William and Edward are listed with their parents.
Their older sister Catherine is not. Her story stays open.
James McPadden and Catherine McNiff’s family · the Bridgeport branch
James once crossed an ocean to reach his sister, Catherine McPadden Kelly. Now another generation is growing up around him in Bridgeport. The two younger boys are recorded as teenagers; Cecelia and the younger James are in their twenties.
A census gathers people into a household. A family reaches beyond one address. Here, that difference begins to matter.
Five siblings · two household records
Look back ten years. The names stay in view; the record beside each name changes.
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
We first met her at the edge of the 1920 census sheet. In 1930, she was recorded as seventeen, the oldest of five children at Main Street.
Here, in the 1940 Sherwood household, her name is absent. It is tempting to supply the next chapter: a marriage, work, another home. But none of those explanations is established by this page.
We do not yet know where her life led. Recovering it means following Catherine herself—not treating her as a missing line in her father’s story.
A household of older children
Cecelia is recorded as twenty-five, James as twenty-two, William as seventeen and Edward as fifteen. The page gives us their ages and relationships. It does not tell us how they spent an evening, what responsibilities they shared, or what each hoped would come next.
Those are lives to discover in their own right, through records, photographs and memories whose sources we can name. For now, we know who the census places together.
Before we leave this household, one more connection takes us beyond the front door: James’s work, and the records that lead to Beardsley Park.
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.
