Good morning, Friends & Cousins! It's raining cats and dogs here, and there is lots of thunder and lightning, so I am going to send this message as quickly as possible before we loose power. As of Saturday, we had 50 subscribers on this mail list! This is a wonderful chance to "brainstorm" on genealogical problems and share information much more efficiently than ever before. Here is my contribution for today: I noticed something in the message from Karen Adams about James Leonard Barger which brought to mind a little piece of information passed on to me by one of my students who worked for the government on the 1990 census. Karen said that she cant' find James and Betty Barger in the 1920 KS census, although the family says they were there at that time period. Apparently, this is something that happens more frequently than you might imagine. My student told me that the census bureau gets many letters from people who want the records corrected because their families were omitted from the 1920 census. They state that they know for sure that their family lived at a particular address in 1920, and that they can prove it. Well, those people may be perfectly right. The family might very well have lived at that address in 1920. But, that does not mean they were necessarily at home on the day of the enumeration. The census traditionally is taken in June, and that is a time when many people in 1920 and in each 10th year before that, would take trips to visit relatives, go to the seashore, attend fairs, go to market, etc. Sometimes we forget that in the days before television, people tended to visit and socialize much more than they do today. By 1920, some families had automobiles, and many traveled by train. Children were often sent to visit their grandparents for the summer. In areas where the planting is done in June, several families might gather at a neighbor's farm. June was also a popular month for revival meetings. These often went on for days, and participants tented out, rather than travel long distances each day. For these and many other reasons, the enumerations have never been 100% accurate, and occasionally some people were never counted. Then there are proud fathers, like mine, who listed all his children in the 1990 census even the ones who were grown up and living elsewhere. When you don't find your relatives where you expect them to be in a particular census year, it is a good ides to take out a map, and list counties which surround their "home" county. When you have checked those counties, widen the circle. Frequently, you wont have to make many circles before you locate your people. Don't be afraid to cross state lines, either. That is how I found all my Tennessee folks in Mississippi! Also, in many areas, assessments for property tax, and for personal property taxes, were published in local newspapers. Those old papers, many of which are available on microfilm, are a great source for locating people who were "missed" in the census of their home county. They also were published every year, not just once every ten years. Don't overlook newspapers as a resource. In counties where tax records were not retained more than 20 years, or where fires destroyed the records, they can help you fill in the gaps. I hope this helps some of you who have "hit a brick wall" and lost relatives between census periods. Susan Barger Donahue BARGER FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY 411 East Roosevelt Road Wheaton, IL 60187-5564 suzid@tripod.net