Remember the close to 649 census records I added to my database over the last 6 weeks? Well, the number is getting closer to 700 with the breakthrough I had recently on my Carter line. This family was a real challenge. Someone was always misspelled. You would think that Carter would be relatively straightforward. Well the name was INDEXED variously as Carter, Couter and Coster. Edwin H Carter was often written as Edward and variously as E. H. It wasn't bad enough that he was named Edwin Harvey Carter, but he had sons named Harvey and Edwin. His daughter Marion is nowhere to be found on the 1900 census and she should be there as Marion Alexander.
Then there is Virginia Carter. Born in 1836, she was two years younger than my great-great grandmother Elizabeth C. Carter Webb. She married William H or William B. Huntsberry (and shame to all the people who copied the wrong information from an Ancestry Family Tree. After her first husband died, she married secondly, George W. Chinn. More on that in a future blog post.
Columbia Carter married John Vaughn. Or Vanph or Vaughan. You can see it is enough to make you pull your hair out.
Some of the problems I encountered are the result of the census taker. The rest are the results of poor indexing or the inability to read the last name correctly. The pressure to get all this done before April 2nd when the 1940 is released is unbelievable. Who is pressuring me? Me, of course. And Family Search, because they need help indexing the 1940 and keeping it free for everyone.
Copyright 2010-2012, ACK for Gene Notes
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