52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 4

This weeks prompt for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge is "Census"
Well that could be a lot of things....

I decided to pick the 1940 Census.  Mainly because that is the first time I saw my dad show up on the Census.

It was so cool to me to see my 6 year old daddy's name listed.  My grandparents were both so young.

My dad was born in 1934 and this was actually the first census done after he was born.  My mom hadn't been born yet, as she would be born late in 1940. 

My dad is the last name on the page.

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I discovered from this that both of his parents had a 5th grade education.  I honestly never knew that.  I honestly didn't think they had attended school.  I notice, from reading census, that Grade 5 seems to be a common time for people to have stopped going to school.

I can only assume that was because by the time they were in the 5th grade, they were now about 10 years old and the family needed them to work on the farm full time instead of going to school.  Probably when they were younger, they just weren't able to help as much but by age 10, they were expected to pretty much do everything the adults did.

In a close up of the census, you see my grandfather, grandmother and father are the last 3 names on this page.  The family listed above it, is my great-grandmother and my great aunts and uncles, when they were still young and living at home.

 

(click to enlarge)

You can see that my great grandmother was widowed at age 54, with 4 children still at home.  Her husband died 7 years earlier, in 1933, the year before my father was born.  I wonder what his cause of death was?  He was 50 when he died.  

I also wonder....why does my grandfather - Clifton (spelled Clynton on the census) have an x with a circle by his name.  I wonder what the meaning of that was?  He was the only one on the page with that....hmmmm???