Happy Season 3 of Who Do You Think You Are?!!!
Really looking forward to tonight's episode :-)
"Martin Sheen, a longtime
activist, sets out on a journey to find out if his ancestors shared his
greatest passion. His search leads him to Ireland where he investigates
his uncle's ties to the Irish Civil War and his devotion to activism. He
continues his journey in Spain, where he uncovers another relative who
also fought for social justice and was wrongfully imprisoned during
Franco's fascist regime. As he continues to trace his Spanish roots back
to the 1700s, he unearths an unexpected family secret." (from NBC press release)
Census Tip #1
Be open to different spellings of names.
I
was helping someone once and found a census entry I was 99% sure was
the correct family. The person I was attempting to help said it couldn't
be them because they didn't spell their last name that way. This was on
a popular Facebook page and no matter how many people agreed with me the person refused to believe it was their family. AAAAHHHH!!!
Census
enumerators had a lot of ground to cover and did not usually ask how to
spell every name. In some cruel cases they didn't even bother with
first names and just used initials but we won't go into that because it
makes me want to throw things.
How would your ancestor have pronounced their own name? Remember that they may have pronounced your surname much differently than you do. Did your ancestor have an accent?
Now imagine you're from a completely different part of the world than
your ancestor. What does the name sound like to you? Gillespie could end
up as Galespy, Villagran as Viagran or Hochstetler as Hostetler. Even
without an accent some names may be difficult to determine and an
enumerator may have asked how to spell them but many people couldn't
spell their own names. So be flexible and creative when spelling names. 
There was also the issue I ran into in one area my family lived in. I found info that stated that the enumerator never went out and actually spoke to anyone for the census. He sat at home and in his office and did it all from memory since he knew all the families in his area. :( Well he did not appear to know them as well as he thought.
ReplyDeleteThere is also the fact that sometimes neighbors were allowed to answer the questions for a family if the enumerator stopped by and did not find them home. I have seen actual notes on census records that state that.