Sometimes the person living downstairs is not just a neighbor. He is your future brother-in-law.
Our ancestors did not live in a vacuum. They lived next to people, above people, below people. Sometimes those people stayed neighbors. Sometimes they became family.
I found a perfect example of that this week while working through the 1940 and 1950 census records for my grandmother’s side of the family. The house was a duplex in Brooklyn. My family, the Dowlings, lived on the second floor. Another family, the Panchaks, lived on the first floor. By the next census, those two households were one.
Two Families, One House
In April 1940, the second floor of the duplex belonged to Bridget Plunkett. Bridget was 86 years old and listed as head of household. She had purchased the house from her brother-in-law, Thomas Dowling, during the Depression, which is likely why she appears as head rather than Thomas or her sister Mary. (For more about this house, see “One Address, Eight Census Records, 45 Years of Family Survival“)
Living with Bridget were her sister Mary Dowling, 70, and Mary’s husband Thomas Dowling, 68. Their two daughters were there too: Julia, 33, and Gwendolyn, 25. Four adults and two grown daughters, sharing a floor.
Downstairs, the Panchak family filled the first-floor apartment. Michael Panchak, 44, headed that household with his wife Pauline, 43. Their children included a son, William, 21, and a younger son, George, 17.
Two families, two floors, one address, and two young people not yet married. And they had probably lived one staircase apart for less than ten years. The Panchaks do not appear at the duplex in the 1930 census, only the Dowling family does.
So sometime between 1930 and 1940, the Panchaks moved in downstairs, and a friendship between two young neighbors had a decade, at most, to grow into something more.
Ten Years Later
By April 1950, something had changed. William Panchak, now 32, appears as head of his own household, still at the same duplex. His wife is listed as Gwendolyn.
Gwendolyn Dowling, the girl who grew up on the second floor, had married William Panchak, the boy who grew up on the first floor. Their marriage license was dated 17 January 1942 in Brooklyn.4 A license date is not necessarily a wedding date, but it puts their marriage squarely in the years right after that 1940 census. Their three daughters followed in 1942, 1946, and 1949, all born into the same house where their parents once lived on separate floors.
I grew up visiting that house myself, upstairs to see my grandparents and downstairs to see “Aunt Gwen and Uncle Bill.” I always knew Gwen was my grandmother’s sister, and I knew she had grown up in that same house. Looking at these two census records now, I understand the connection even better. Gwen did not just grow up nearby. She grew up one floor above the very apartment where William would end up living, and one floor above the man she would eventually marry.
What This Tells Me
Working-class Brooklyn in the 1940s meant shared walls and shared stoops. Families who rented or owned adjoining floors were not strangers passing in a hallway. They saw each other every day. They likely knew each other’s routines, celebrations, and hardships. It makes sense that a friendship between two young people living one floor apart might turn into something more.
It is also a reminder for how I approach research going forward. When I see a household sharing an address with another family on a census page, I am going to pay closer attention to the ages and names of the unmarried adult children. They might not stay just neighbors for long.
Your Turn
Take a look at your own ancestor’s census entries. Is there another family living at the same address, or right next door? Check the names of the unmarried children in both households. You might find, like I did, that “neighbor” was only a temporary label.
- 1940 U.S. census, Kings County, New York, Brooklyn A.D. 12, Enumeration District 24-1422, Block B, page 1A (penned), Beverly Road, house number 204, visited No. 4, Thomas F. Dowling family; imaged, “1940 United States Federal Census,” Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/2442/: accessed 8 May 2024). ↩︎
- 1930 U.S. census, Kings County, New York, Brooklyn Borough, Ward of city A.D. 12, Enumeration District 24-1641, Block B, Tract 448 (part of), page 1A (penned), Beverley Road, house number 204, dwelling 2, family 2, Thomas F. Dowling family; imaged, “1930 United States Federal Census,” Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/6224/: accessed 6 May 2024). ↩︎
- 1950 U.S. census, Kings County, New York, Brooklyn, Enumeration District 24-1724, page 12 (penned), Beverly Road, house number 204 up, Serial number for dwelling 111, line 17, David Sten family; imaged, “1950 United States Federal Census,” Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/62308/: accessed 9 May 2024). ↩︎
- “New York, New York, U.S., Marriage License Indexes, 1907-2018,” database, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/61406/: accessed 23 August 2026), entry for Gwen Dowling and William Panchak, license no. 1763, license date 17 Jan 1942, Brooklyn, New York City, New York ↩︎
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