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Monday, December 26, 2005

A Censustaker Speaks

I recently had the interesting experience of assisting the U.S. census bureau with a special census in Arizona. It revealed a few things of genealogical application. The first is that censustakers were instructed to make a few attempts to contact residents directly but, failing that, they were to get information from neighbors. Some neighbors were able to provide only genders and approximate ages. Reliance on that type of informant surely explains some of the odd and contradictory reports of ages and birthplaces in old census records, not to mention variations in spelling.

I have thought of the censustakers of the 1800s, making their way on horseback or on foot from house to house. Each page is dated, and it's rare to find a record where the censustaker backtracked or came back a second time after missing a family. In other words, if a family wasn't home, I'm sure the censustaker just tasked the neighbor to give what information they could.

Many times I've heard people explain that they odd reports in the census were probably due to attempts by their ancestors to hide something. Maybe so, by why impute something ill when you can blame on the neighbors?

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