Scotch-Irish-L Archives

Archiver > Scotch-Irish > 2010-01 > 1263588596


From:
Subject: Re: [S-I] Failure notice
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 20:49:56 +0000 (UTC)
In-Reply-To: <9BD7409E1C2448BB91D73C9053FD30B6@Donna>


Hi Donna, those Irwins (etc) causing trouble again! Speaking of the US Census, or rather people paid to index it at Ancestry.com. I wonder sometimes who they hire. No one could find this one family I was looking for. I knew where they should be living and searched the township with no name (turns up everyone). That was very enlightening. Who ever had indexed it should be fired. All the John Smith, Jr. (or whoever) were indexed with Junior as the last name. Or Senior. This was an early census -- 1820 or 30...one of those very hard to read chicken scratch censuses. The census taker had not only written down their names but also occupations. The
bad indexer had dutifully indexed them with the occupation as the surname. So I found the man under Miller.
Living next to Carpenter and Parson and Farmer, a couple Juniors and Seniors too. You basically couldn't find
anyone indexed correctly in the whole township.

Linda Merle

----- Original Message -----
From: "Donna Nichols" <>
To: "Scotch-Irish list" <>
Sent: Friday, January 15, 2010 3:33:21 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: [S-I] Failure notice

It isn't just last names getting screwed up! I had hit all kinds of brick walls on my Kennedy line (not Irish)..because of a misspelled word in the 1860 IL US census. My great grandfather was Urban Bernard Kennedy. My grandfather was Walter Urban Kennedy. I got in trouble because I did not use Urban as a middle name for my eldest son because it was a family name. I could NOT find Urban Bernard anywhere. I knew he was born in IL.. About 2 years ago, I got a message from a distant cousin, it turns our. She recognized something else..and then we both checked the 1860 census again..and someone had written Erwin Bernard Kennedy.. In another record, it was Irving, and then there was Irwin...Got hold of a death record, and a whole bunch got untangled.
And, as for the Baird's YEP! but now the other donna threw in another way for me to look for my husband's Bairds who came to NJ really early on.

Polish names have also had a way of getting really garbaged up too. I am still fighting three of them!

Donna

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