[or-roots] More Census headache

[W David Samuelsen]

There were FOUR copies.

The original, by census taker
1st copy, retained by county court (most not found, may have been
destroyed or stashed away nowhere.)
2nd copy, retained by state (many survive and are kept in state
archives)
3rd copy, Federal - the one everybody see on microfilm.

David Samuelsen

Leslie Chapman wrote:
> Ronda;
> 
> One possibile explanation that has been discussed in here before is that a
> lot of Census takers recopied thier info to the forms after taking rough
> notes during their visits to the houses. Possibly that is how our ancestors
> got erroneously recorded; the info was taken down in a disorganized form and
> then carelessly copied.
> 
> I survey for a living and we always make notes about how we arrive at
> various calculation results in the course of our work, yet very often when
> we go back to our notes in order to restake something if it doesn't get
> built the first time we stake it, we can't figure out what our notes mean
> and sometimes conclude we blew it the first time and didn't actually stake
> it right, or else our notes are not reflecting what we actually did, so I
> can sympathize with Census takers not always making a clean copy that is
> correct.
> 
> LEs C
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: RondaRed at aol.com
> Sent: Sunday, September 12, 2004 4:23 PM
> 
> I wanted to share my Census Headache and the interesting twist.
> I searched for a very long time for my James Preston Johnson in the 1880
> census in the household of his father. After a while we had reason to
> believe his father was Shadrick Johnson. We had an old photograph also that
> had Doc Johnson as the name of the man in the photograph. I searched and
> searched for James P. Johnson and could find no trace of him anywhere. I
> finally started searching the indexes for Shadrick Johnson and found one
> that was the right age and was even listed as a physician, but he was alone
> with no other Johnson's in the household. I kept going back to this Shadrick
> Johnson as I just felt he was the right person but I couldn't figure out
> where his family was. Then I took a look at the census image and a light
> bulb went on. In the household was his wife and children but with a
> different surname. Go figure this one out.
> 
> 
> ****** I believe Mary Earl, James P. Earl, Sarah Earl, and Edward Earl are
> really the family of Shadrick Johnson, and that there was a mistake made on
> the census. Mary, James P. and Sarah all match with Shadrick's family.
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