This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Schmidt, Steinmeyer, Mohr Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/JW.2ADI/820.2.1.1.1 Message Board Post: First, I was able to identify Jan Christoffers Schmidt as the same "John Smith" you have in the census because this is my direct blood lines. I have copies of birth records from Grosswalde, immigration records, marriage records, death records and handwritten Bible records. This is documentation. Census and newspaper indexes and birth and death indexes are NOT documentation. They are secondary sources and you are taking someone else's word that the records state what is in the index. I have been doing genealogy research for myself and others for 40 years and have never accepted online indexes and census as a primary source. I agree the new age of Internet access is great. The danger is many newer researchers take this information as fact and do no further research nor do they back up their research with documenation. Rest assured no one in this Schmidt family ever changed their name to Smith. I still live in the same community this family settled in in the 1870s as do many of their descendants. The church they started is still there. This was an ethnic German community until the 1940s. My father, even though he and both his parents were born here, spoke only Platt Deutsch when he started school. They were proud of their name and their roots and never Americanized it. Another point is Annie's sister was not Madelane as the 1900 census states. Her name was Magdalena, hence the nickname Lena. Also in the 1900 census it lists Henry and Annie's first born as "Alma, July 1899, daughter" and although the month and year are right the child was in fact a son named Elmer. The census is riddled with mistakes. Part of it stems from the fact that the census taker usually spoke only English and the people he or she interviewed did not. Some stems from the fact that people didn't understand the question or didn't want to answer it for whatever reason. Sometimes the family wasn't home and the information was gleaned from a neighbor. As for the San Francisco call index, again great secondary source. I use it frequently to find documentation. But again, unless you have the marriage record in hand you can only state from that index that at the time of her marriage Anna Eckmann's last name was Eckmann. The index doesn't state if that was a maiden name or not. Nor does it state if Anna was a first or middle name as many people used their middle name frequently because the person they were named after was still living and this avoided confusion. To know whether or not she was married before you need to see the original marriage record. As for the 0/0 in the census. That too isn't always true. Many times I've seen that in a census when I already have birth records for children of that mother. If you are relying on one census to determine Henry was adopted then you are making a mistake. Before anyone should state that for sure, they need to be able to back it up with documentation. Also on your web site you list the Point Pleasant Cemetery as in Elk Grove, but it is in Point Pleasant. I notice you took you information regarding the cemetery from the reading I did for the Sacramento genweb site. But again, in transcribing, typing, etc. I could have made a mistake. You need to visit these places and find these documents yourself to make sure there were mistakes made. I understand this is not your blood line so you are happy with what you have and don't want to persue it further. However, it is my bloodline and I don't like people to post mistakes about it. And though you state your work on this line is finished, you have left information that is either incorrect or not proven for someone else to come along and take as fact.