[or-roots] Ornery Ancestors

[CKlooster at aol.com]

Les, you make a good point about census data.  I have always considered it to 
be collaborative for the following reasons:

The census takers themselves varied so greatly in their education (as 
evidenced by spelling, handwriting, etc.) and also in how precisely they recorded 
data.  You'll notice in the 1880 census for the French and other related families 
that the census taker carefully calculated the Indian blood quantum for those 
of mixed blood showing "1/4 Indian; 3/4 White".  Some census takers under 
"Race" wrote "Mixed" or "Breed" (as in "half-breed").

Also, the information for the whole family was given by whomever was at home 
at the time the census-taker called, sometimes an older child to whom the 
birthplace of mom and dad might be a bit hazy...as might be their ages.  I've 
always made it a mental "rule-of-thumb" to be less skeptical of the ages of 
children in the census records because there is less room for error...a 
three-year-old doesn't look like a ten-year-old.

I read a letter written by an Indiana census-taker in the late 1800's who 
recorded the data given to him on scratch paper then sat down each night and 
carefully filled out the census forms so that they would display his very best 
penmanship.  I don't know how common that practice was, but it is obvious that 
numbers could be transposed and errors made in the copying.  I had visions of 
this man laboring over the census forms late into the night by kerosene 
lamp...and anyone who has used kerosene lamps as a light source knows what a strain 
that is on eyes and concentration.

Then, of course, there is the deliberate misinformation as you mention.  
Sometimes there was a reason for deceiving the census-takers...an attempt to hide 
an identity, for example.  One factor that I've come across several times in 
the 1800's is what appears to be a deliberate deception about place of birth; 
individuals born in Canada or some other country stating that they were born in 
the U.S.  In one instance, this seems to have been because the individual had 
filed a mining claim and he had to be a U.S. citizen to do that.  Donation 
land claims may have been another reason to claim U.S. birth, or even voting.  

If I find consistent data in several census records, or if the census record 
is consistent with other records, I feel that it adds to the body of 
documentation supporting a fact or facts.  I love the online census because it provides 
valuable clues...neighboring households, with the wives of each household 
having a father born in New Brunswick.  Are they sisters?  Possibly.  So I start 
digging for further information.  Finding great-great-grandpa is relatively 
easy.  Finding great-great-grandmother's sister is really hard since women's 
identify (i.e. family name) disappeared when she married.  The census sometimes 
helps in that area.

Carla
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