Page 1-5 of Decatur Twp. 1885 Iowa State Census are now on the Census page at: _www.rootsweb.com/~iadecatu/census.html_ (http://www.rootsweb.com/~iadecatu/census.html) Some things you need to know about Decatur Township in this census: 1. This township was entered onto the census forms very differently then usual. It's sort of in alphabetical order by letter but once you get to the letter (i.e. a, b, c) then it isn't in alphabetical order anymore (i.e. Belomy comes before Bare). 2. The pages were originally two-sided. There is a lot of bleed through from the other side of the page on this part of the microfilm making words very difficult to decipher in some spots as there are two words on top of each other, one forwards and one backwards. 3. This person had atrocious spelling! Just a few examples - Newbraska, Indania, Aurthur. 4. The microfilm is very blurry and couldn't be sharpened any more. I had one of the librarians come and adjust it for me and she couldn't get it any sharper either. So if there are mistakes I apologize ahead of time. You might take more time checking alternate spellings and if something looks really out of place you can email me or try getting the film by interlibrary loan to take a look yourself. Here are the surnames so far: Akers Akes Beck Biddle Buckingham Brenaman Belomy Ball Brown McCalla Lefler Bare Burnett Bishop Cochran Campbell Johnson Clark Covington Stacey Dietiker CC Decatur County IAGenweb Website