Re: 1940 census search tips to remember later

[Bzee]

> I d/l "my" GenWeb county and am indexing it on my own.
> I am also helping index "my" state and two others via FamilySearch. Most
> of the enumerators I've seen have decent handwriting, so that isn't the
> problem.
>
> But I gotta tell you, someone was running a contest to see which enumerator
> could misspell the most given names. The surnames seem to suffer less and
> the place names hardly at all (although there are a few winners there too).
>
> So, for the future, when the search engines are up and running -- you're
> going to have to get SERIOUSLY creative or rely on surnames and your
> eyeballs. :( Because the indexers can only index what the enumerator
> wrote, not what he should have written.
>
> Cheryl Singhals <sing...@erols.com>


In the 1880 Census, my great grandfather Gunder Larson became Lars Gunderson.
Found him by going through the images - his wife and five kids had the correct
given names and ages.

Bob

[Brian]

> I d/l "my" GenWeb county and am indexing it on my own.
> I am also helping index "my" state and two others via FamilySearch. Most
> of the enumerators I've seen have decent handwriting, so that isn't the
> problem.
>
> But I gotta tell you, someone was running a contest to see which enumerator
> could misspell the most given names. The surnames seem to suffer less and
> the place names hardly at all (although there are a few winners there too).
>
> So, for the future, when the search engines are up and running -- you're
> going to have to get SERIOUSLY creative or rely on surnames and your
> eyeballs. :( Because the indexers can only index what the enumerator
> wrote, not what he should have written.
>
> Cheryl Singhals <sing...@erols.com>

I found both sides of my parents. The person who wrote the information for my
mother's side had decent handwriting. On my father's side I had trouble
deciphering the information I knew about.

On their 1930 census, I had trouble finding my father's census. It was listed
as Marris instead of Morris. The census taker had a deep dip after the "o".

Brian <drmorri...@comcast.net>

[singhals]

I was thinking more of Mary with 2 R and Larry with 1; an o where most of us
would use an a (Ivan, for instance!); the omission of a "silent h"; a lot of
those Teddy Roosevelt-approved spellings. Not to mention what sure looks
intentional mangling by swapping an ie for a y and vice versa; Robert with
only 1 R; Francis used for both male and female ...

Again, it's not the handwriting that'll get you on this one, it's the content.

Cheryl

singhals <sing...@erols.com>