--part1_c4.1ff51ea.26057915_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Got this on another list. Food for thought. --part1_c4.1ff51ea.26057915_boundary Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Disposition: inline Return-Path: <MO-STLOUIS-METRO-L-request@rootsweb.com> Received: from rly-yg02.mx.aol.com (rly-yg02.mail.aol.com [172.18.147.2]) by air-yg03.mail.aol.com (v70.19) with ESMTP; Sat, 18 Mar 2000 01:12:18 -0500 Received: from bl-11.rootsweb.com (bl-11.rootsweb.com [209.85.6.27]) by rly-yg02.mx.aol.com (v70.20) with ESMTP; Sat, 18 Mar 2000 01:12:08 -0500 Received: (from slist@localhost) by bl-11.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id WAA15173; Fri, 17 Mar 2000 22:11:32 -0800 (PST) Resent-Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 22:11:32 -0800 (PST) From: kimbuc@juno.com Old-To: MO-STLOUIS-METRO-D@rootsweb.com, StLouis-MO-D@rootsweb.com, Missouri-D@rootsweb.com Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2000 00:10:12 -0500 Message-ID: <20000318.001038.-770229.1.kimbuc@juno.com> X-Mailer: Juno 4.0.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Juno-Line-Breaks: 0-1,6-7,13-14,19-20,22-47,49-50,52-72,74,77 X-Juno-Att: 0 X-Juno-RefParts: 0 Subject: [MO-STLOUIS-METRO] The wonderful census Resent-Message-ID: <381V6C.A.osD.S4x04@bl-11.rootsweb.com> To: MO-STLOUIS-METRO-L@rootsweb.com Resent-From: MO-STLOUIS-METRO-L@rootsweb.com X-Mailing-List: <MO-STLOUIS-METRO-L@rootsweb.com> archive/latest/1578 X-Loop: MO-STLOUIS-METRO-L@rootsweb.com Precedence: list Resent-Sender: MO-STLOUIS-METRO-L-request@rootsweb.com Listers, With all the conversations relating to Census 2000 I thought it might be time to bring things back to reality. The census is not to log information for future generations to refer back to, 75 years from now most of will be long gone and just a few scribbled lines in the census report. Should you and I write down the details of our lives for our descendants it will be much more meaningful than what is contained in some dusty ledger or a few digits in some yet to be designed computer. How many of these computer disks that we are creating today will be able to be read by the future computers, most of us can't read the stuff we put on the old 5-1/4 disks. The census is nothing more than a numbers game X number of people gets a House of Representative member, X minus so many reduces the number of Representatives in an area. Or who gets the next bucket of money and how much. Our founding fathers sure weren't thinking about family research when they wrote out the requirement, they were counting noses. As to the Value of a census record for Genealogical purposes I would make following observations. Census records across the country are historic for their errors, especially when it comes to the ages of the male members of the family. You must remember not all of our ancestors came to this country because they were happy campers in their homelands. Europe during all of it's history was in and out of wars, much the same as the world is today. You need people to fight these wars and not all people wanted to be what was lovingly referred to as "Cannon Fodder". As a result of this need e