Research Methods · The Adelaide Branch / Mary Douglas Project
Did She Vote? The Genealogical Proof Standard at Work
A voter register in Manhattan names a “Marie L. Douglas” at an address where Adelaide Branch was living in 1915. Proving that the registrant and the writer are the same woman — and learning what else the register can honestly say — is a useful demonstration of the Genealogical Proof Standard, including the parts where the evidence argues back.
The question
Adelaide Mary Branch of Hartwick, New York (1873–1948), left Monticello in the wreckage of the scandal of December 1913 and rebuilt her life in Manhattan under the name Mary A. Douglas — publishing stories and essays, and keeping herself, deliberately, hard to follow. Among the stylings attested for her in the record is Marie L. Douglas.
A Marie L. Douglas appears on the printed List of Registered Voters for 1924 at 73 West 49th Street — the house where the New York State census had found her a decade earlier — and she registered there again in 1925, 1926, and 1928. Was the registrant the writer? And if so, did she actually vote?
The standard
The Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS) is the discipline this project applies to every identification. It has five elements: (1) reasonably exhaustive research; (2) complete and accurate source citations; (3) thorough analysis and correlation of the evidence; (4) resolution of conflicting evidence; and (5) a soundly reasoned, coherently written conclusion. The fourth element is the one that separates proof from wishful thinking: conflicts are not smoothed over. They are named, weighed, and carried into the conclusion.
The search
The Manhattan voter registers for 1915–1956 (Ancestry, collection 62363) were searched under every form of her name — Mary, Marie, Mary A., Adelaide, Addie, Adeline — and, for completeness, under her birth name: no Adelaide, Addie, or Adeline Branch appears in the registers at all. The published Manhattan List of Registered Voters for 1924 was searched too, and in the end read on the printed page itself (see “The conflicts” below). Every plausible Douglas entry was opened and read on the register image itself, not from the index alone. The censuses of 1915, 1920, and 1925 and three editions of Trow’s New York City directory (1915, 1917, 1922/23) were searched the same way — the directories by reading their full text directly, after the archive’s own search tool repeatedly failed on volumes of that size.
What the records show
| Year | Record | What it says |
|---|---|---|
| 1915 | N.Y. State census, 73 W. 49th St. | Marie L. Douglas, head of household, age 45, “No Occupation” — with seven boarders (a physician, a bookkeeper, a florist and his wife, a saleswoman, a dentist, a cook) and a maid. The house was a boarding house, and she kept it. |
| 1915, 1917, 1922/23 | Trow’s Directory | “Marie L” (1915) and “Mary L” (1917, 1922/23) Douglas, householder (“h”), 73 W. 49th — the keeper of record, year after year. |
| 1920 | U.S. census, W. 67th St. | “Mary Daglas” (the enumerator’s spelling), 46, single, head; occupation Writer — Book — Own Account. This is the writer, at her documented 1919–20 address, bridging the Mary/Marie name forms and the two addresses. |
| 1924 | Printed List of Registered Voters | “Douglas, Marie L.” under the W. 49th St. heading, 42nd Election District, 10th Assembly District. The List records registration only — no ballot is documented for 1924. |
| 1925 | Voter register, 10 Oct. | Marie L. Douglas, 73 W. 49th; age stated only as “over 30”; enrolled Republican; the register’s own ballot columns record ballot 190 delivered and voted — she voted. |
| 1926 | Voter register, 9 Oct. | Same address; the entry cites her 1925 registration; ballot 258 delivered and voted; the party column stands blank this year. Householder now “Owner Mrs Doyle”; her occupation “House,” her place of business 23 W. 49th St. — she has lost the keepership and is doing house work a few doors down, still living in the house. |
| 1928 | Voter register, 10 Oct. | Same address; cites the 1926 registration; Republican; ballot 222 delivered and voted. The registrations form a chain back to 1924, each clerk copying the last. |
The conflicts — and what was done with them
The ages seemed not to agree — until the column was read as printed. The index behind the registers assigns her estimated birth years implying 52 in 1925 and about 30 in 1926 and 1928, and a first reading of the pages took those figures at face value. Read at the column level, under its printed heading (“A voter over 21 years old may state such age as over 21”), every entry in fact says the same thing: “over 30” — the word written above the figure. The stray numbers that fed the estimates sit in the neighboring residence-duration columns, which contradict one another freely and are given no weight below. The one apparent material conflict in the case therefore dissolved — not by assertion, but by re-reading the source at full size, column by column. The 1915 census’s 45 stands as ordinary census variance; the registers state no exact age at all, so age is neutral evidence: it neither makes the identification nor breaks it.
The residence columns are unreliable — the registers’ self-reported “years in state / county / district” figures contradict one another and her documented Sullivan County years. They are given no weight.
The register’s 1924 chain note checked out. Each entry cites a prior registration, and the 1925 entry points back to 1924 — a year whose register books do not survive (the Municipal Archives’ Manhattan volumes for 1920–1925 are missing at the source). What survives is the printed List of Registered Voters, and its page for the 42nd Election District, 10th Assembly District, carries her: “73. Douglas, Marie L.” under the W. 49th Street heading, with the house’s third-floor tenant on the line above. A first text search of the List missed her because its machine-readable text renders the line without a space — “73.Douglas” — a reminder that a negative search result is only as good as the text it searched. The List records registration, not voting; whether she cast a ballot in 1924 is not documented.
Namesakes were excluded on the images, not the index. A Mary A. Douglas of 66 Barrow Street registered in 1917 and voted — but her 1918 re-registration gives her age as 33, born about 1885: a different woman, employed at Western Electric. A younger Mary Douglas cluster follows at the same Barrow Street address (b. ~1897). Most instructive is Mary I. Douglas, who kept furnished rooms at 157 West 46th Street in these same years — a different Douglas, in the same trade, two blocks away, and a standing warning against conflating the women of the West Forties who share this surname.
Mrs Doyle, who owns the house by 1926, appears in no directory at the address; the succession can only be dated between the 1922/23 directory canvass and October 1926. Her identity is an open question — noted, because it is there, although it does not bear on the identification.
Conclusion
The Marie L. Douglas who kept the boarding house at 73 West 49th Street in 1915, and who registered from that address in 1924, 1925, 1926, and 1928, is — in this researcher’s assessment, applying the Genealogical Proof Standard — Adelaide Mary Branch, the writer Mary A. Douglas, to a high degree of probability. The assessment rests on five concordant elements: an attested name styling, unbroken address continuity, a persistent named household traceable across census and directory, her own signature repeated across a chained series of registrations, and party and occupation entries that fit the documented life. The one apparent material conflict — the register ages — dissolved under re-reading, as documented above; one open item (the identity of Mrs Doyle) is flagged where it belongs: in the open, where it does not bear on the identification.
And the question that started the search has its answer. Eleven years after she left Monticello, Adelaide Branch appears on the printed voters’ list for 1924 at 73 West 49th Street; in the fall of 1925 she registered there as a Republican, and the register records ballot 190 delivered and voted in her name. She voted again in 1926 and in 1928.
Sources
- “Manhattan Voter Registers, 1915–1956,” Ancestry, collection 62363, records 4070877 (1925), 3797632 (1926), 5277681 (1928); images rec0091_06906-00007, rec0091_05183-00008, rec0091_06826-00010.
- New York State Census, 1915, Manhattan, A.D. 27, E.D. 20, p. 28 (73 West 49th Street), line 31; Ancestry, record 8570750, image 32848_B094084-00080.
- U.S. Census, 1920, Manhattan, A.D. 7 (W. 67th Street), Mary “Daglas”; Ancestry, record 41765316.
- Trow’s General Directory of the Boroughs of Manhattan and Bronx, City of New York, 1915, 1917, and 1922/23 editions, s.v. “Douglas” (Internet Archive: trowsgeneraldire1915trow; trowsgeneraldire1917trow; trowsgenerald192223p1trow).
- List of Registered Voters, Borough of Manhattan, 1924, 10th Assembly District, 42nd Election District, s.v. “Douglas, Marie L.” (Internet Archive, RegisteredVotersNYC1924ManhattanAD10, leaf 18; indexed at Ancestry, collection 61536, record 1332988).
- New York State Census, 1925, Manhattan (searched; no Mary/Marie Douglas at 73 W. 49th Street).
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