52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is a series of weekly prompts created by Amy Johnson Crow to encourage reflection on our ancestors’ lives. The prompt for the week of January 12 is “What the Story Means to Me,” so let me introduce you to Josiah W. Bagby.
Josiah W. Bagby’s life can be traced almost entirely through census records, which follow him from a rural farming community into the city of Richmond over the course of seventy years. Taken together, these records tell a story of mobility, skilled labor, and endurance across changing economic landscapes.
In 1860, Josiah had established himself in Fluvanna County, where he appears as a 24-year-old husband and father already working as a carpenter. This is the first clear evidence of the trade that would define his adult life. Carpentry offered more stability than farming, but it also tied him to physical labor and the availability of local work. His household at that time included his wife, Martha Agnes Kidd, and two young children.
The 1870 and 1880 censuses show Josiah firmly rooted in rural Fluvanna County, raising a large family while continuing to work as a carpenter. By 1880, the household included eight children, ranging from young adults to an infant. These records represent the height of the family’s rural life—full, busy, and labor-intensive. Older children remained at home into adulthood, suggesting that family labor and shared resources were essential to household stability.
Sometime between 1880 and 1900, Josiah made the most significant move of his life, leaving the countryside for Richmond City. In the 1900 census, he appears in the Fairfield Ward of Richmond, living with his wife, his son John W. Bagby, and daughter-in-law Annie. At 64 years old, Josiah was still listed as a carpenter—a striking detail that speaks to both necessity and physical resilience. The census also records that he and Martha had been married for 42 years, anchoring this urban chapter of his life in long-standing family ties.
By 1910, Josiah was listed as the head of household in Richmond, living with Martha and their son James E. Bagby and his wife. Once again, carpentry appears as the family trade, passed from father to son. Josiah died in 1913, and Martha would outlive him by nearly a decade, remaining in Richmond until her death in 1922.
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| Josiah W. Bagby across six decades of census records, 1840–1910, tracing his life from rural Virginia to the city of Richmond. |
Following Josiah Bagby through the census records has helped me see how much of my family’s story is shaped by work and movement. His life spans a period of enormous change—from rural Virginia farming communities to an urban, industrializing Richmond—and his path reflects the choices working families made to survive.
Josiah did not inherit land, nor did he accumulate it. Instead, he relied on skill. Carpentry gave him mobility, but not security. It explains both his ability to leave rural Fluvanna County and his need to keep working well into his sixties and seventies. The census records show a man who adapted repeatedly, not for adventure, but for opportunity.
What stands out to me is that the move to Richmond did not happen when Josiah was young. It came late in life, after decades spent raising children in the countryside. By 1900, he was living in his son’s household—still working, but no longer independent in the way he once had been. This feels less like retirement and more like interdependence, a family reorganizing itself around age, labor, and necessity.
Josiah and Martha raised their children to adulthood, yet several of those adult children died young. One son, H. Samuel Bagby, died at age thirty-three and was buried without a marked grave. That detail lingers with me—not as a sign of neglect, but as a reminder of how limited a working family’s options could be. Headstones cost money. Time away from work had consequences. Even grief had to fit into the margins of daily life.
This story matters to me because it reframes success. Josiah did not leave behind land, wealth, or monuments. What he left was continuity—a trade passed down, children supported into adulthood, and a family that adapted rather than fractured. The census records don’t capture emotion, but they do capture persistence. And sometimes, persistence is the legacy.
After Josiah’s death in 1913, Martha applied for a Civil War widow’s pension in January 1914. On that application, she reported owning no real estate and just twenty-five dollars in personal property. It is one of the few records that states the family’s economic reality so plainly.
Knowing this, the burial records take on new meaning. Josiah has a marked grave. Their son H. Samuel does not. Neither does Martha, who died in 1922. These absences are not oversights in memory, but reflections of circumstance. Stone was permanent. Survival came first.
In the end, Josiah Bagby’s life is remembered not through property or permanence, but through paper. Census records trace his movement across counties and decades; a pension application records the scarcity his widow faced; tombstones mark who could be remembered in stone and who could not. These records do not diminish their lives. Instead, they remind me that remembrance has always depended on circumstance—and that genealogy, at its best, restores names and context where permanence once proved out of reach.
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| Gravestone of Josiah W. Bagby, Oakwood Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia. Photo by ©️ Edward R. Olsen. |
Key References:
- 1860 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch. Record Group Number: 29; Series Number: M653; Residence Date: 1860; Home in 1860: Fluvanna, Virginia; Roll: M653_1345; Page: 738; Family History Library Film: 805345.
- 1870 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Year: 1870; Census Place: Columbia, Fluvanna, Virginia; Roll: M593_1646; Page: 176A.
- 1880 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Year: 1880; Census Place: Cunningham, Fluvanna, Virginia; Roll: 1365; Page: 438A; Enumeration District: 050.
- 1900 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2004. Year: 1900; Census Place: Fairfield, Henrico, Virginia; Roll: 1713; Page: 6; Enumeration District: 0031.
- 1910 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2006. Year: 1910; Census Place: Richmond Marshall Ward, Richmond (Independent City), Virginia; Roll: T624_1645; Page: 7A; Enumeration District: 0136; FHL microfilm: 1375658.