>Don Trent wrote:
Sorry Elizabeth, I failed to mention a specific page as an example.
Using Source Citation: Year: 1850; Census Place: , Campbell, Virginia;
Roll: M432_938; Page: 183; Image: 366, from Ancestry.com. See dwelling 819
and 821 for a typical example of the use on the 1 in parentheses. In
dwelling 821 with John Davis as the head of household, the 2nd person is the
widowed sister, #3 is unknown but likely his sister-in-law, next are four
Callaham women and two have a 1 beside their name. Last is the brother of
the head of household.
Also using Source Citation: Year: 1850; Census Place: , Campbell, Virginia;
Roll: M432_938; Page: 183; Image: 365; see dwelling #815 for Thomas Cock,
where two children have the 1 beside their name.
>Actually if you are using Ancestry.com to view these images you can page
forward or backward and see this occurring quite often.
>My guess is that this is some indication of their relationship, as born of
the 1st wife maybe. Thanks for your time and effort.
Don,
It's amazing how many quirks these census takers can create--and, as always,
there's a lesson to be learned from trying to figure them out.
I did use Ancestry. A couple of things immediately struck me when I
eyeballed the Davis page ---something that doesn't show on the image copy
(or snippet thereof) that you sent offline, because the image copy is
enlarged so much that it omits everyone else on the page, as well as the
last five columns to the right of the page.
A.
Both individuals in the household who have "( | )" after their names in Col.
3 (females I'd call Callahan "children" rather than "women" because, at ages
12 and 16, they were still legal minors) also have a tick mark in Column 11
"Attended school within the year."
B.
All other individuals on that page who have "( | )" after their names (two
girls and a boy aged 9-13 in the Glenn household) also have tick marks in
Col. 11.
Hmhh, I thought. This is *too* easy. So I read a number of pages thereafter.
The pattern still held. Everyone who carried a tick mark in Col. 11 also had
that extra mark in parens after their name in Col. 3.
So, do we have the answer? Nope! I could have stopped looking too soon.
Sixty-five households *before* the family (p. 179-B), we find a different
situation. The ( | ) is there again in the name column, but the individuals
definitely are not children attending school:
Barnet Hughes 25 male
Martha Turner ( | ) 40 female
Vina Turner ( | ) 38 female
Peggy [blank] ( | ) 30 female
Andrew Hughes 22 male
Michael Hughes 19 male
Nancy Turner ( | ) 55 female
What we *do* find there, for each of these individuals marked ( | ) is that
each carries a tick mark in Col. 12* "Persons over 20 y'rs of age who cannot
read & write."
Further down that same page (households 760-761) we have five consecutive
lines that reflect both of the "patterns" above:
Ephraim Gardner ( | ) 13 male [Mark in col. 11]
Mahala Gardner ( | ) 10 fem. [Mark in col. 11]
Sarah Gardner 8 fem. [Col. 11 blank]
James Woods ( | ) 38 male [Mark in col. 12]
Sally Woods ( | ) 30 fem. [Mark in col. 12]
Columns 11 and 12 are the only two columns that ask for literary data. I
checked just about every other page in that ca.180-page district by David
Huffman and *this* pattern holds. Whenever Huffman recorded literacy data,
he put a ( | )--i.e., another "tick mark" in parentheses--after the name of
the individual.
Why he did this is up for debate. Sometimes, when enumerators do something
aberrant, their motives are transparent. Sometimes they aren't. If Asst.
Marshall David Hoffman left a clue to his thought process on this matter, I
didn't figure it out in just one hour of studying his return!
Elizabeth
-----------------------------------------------------
Elizabeth Shown Mills, CG, CGL, FASG
Advanced Research Methodology & Evidence Analysis
Samford University Institute of Genealogy & Historical Research
http://www.samford.edu/schools/ighr/IGHR_courses.html
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