Month: October 2011

My intentions were good today. I’ve gotten a lot done and I’ve even watched my football team fail miserably. I was making progress in my huge project of a more organized family file, when I came across the image above. This isn’t the first time this has happened to me. Just the first time it was so blatant. For example, on certain censuses, the whole last 5 lines of Elliott County, Kentucky are missing. I’m not talking on the last page. I’m talking the the last five lines on each page of a whole enumeration district.

The real question is this, if the image looks like that, How did they index it? Oliver Quesenberry and his wife Mahala are in the index, but obviously not on the image above.

If they are using something else, is there any way for someone to get their grubby hands on it. Since this isn’t an isolated problem, I was just wondering the work around. I know the most obvious is to go to my local historical society or library and check out the microfilm. However, my library doesn’t carry the census or microfilm that I’m aware of, and I’m not in Kentucky. I’m in Maryland… which isn’t anywhere near Kentucky. Well, closer then California is to Maryland but you get my point. The historical society would be an option but I doubt they carry the Kentucky districts but I’m not opposed to trying.

When I came across the missing lines in Elliott County, I checked on FamilySearch, and they were also missing the lines. I just assumed that they were all using the same images of the census. Am I right in thinking this? I was going to look through on FamilySearch this time, but I am unable to view the images. This isn’t vital to my research obviously because research doesn’t hinge on the census. My thoughts are just to turn this into a learning experience for myself.

So that’s how my Sunday has gone and I wouldn’t trade it for the world!