On Thu, 2006-05-25 at 15:48 -0400, [email protected] wrote: > Carolyn, > Thank you so much for the Gwinnett Johnson marriages. Gwinnett records are > scarce as hen's teeth because of the courthouse fire. Anything is appreciated. > However, I have one correction ... > > Re: Sarah Johnson m. Mathew Fowler in 1858 - this is a transcription error > made by the persons who originally transcribed the records. I have a photocopy > of that particular marriage certificate and it says "Nathan Fowler" plain as > day -- not Mathew. Nathan Fowler (b. abt 1800) was the widower of Elizabeth > Pepper(s) Fowler who died sometime between 1850 and 1858. Sarah (Sally) Johnson > was the widower of (?) Johnson, and was the mother-in-law of Nathan's son, > Reuben Fowler. (are you still with me? On some transcribed records its as if the "transcriber" did it again in long hand them someone else typed. Some were done as WPA projects and one of the principles of WPA employment was that persons were hired without having the skills required for the tasks, they were just hired anyway. I've seen David that was really clear transcribed as Daniel. I've seen Davis transcribed as David though to the modern eye the tall script s did sort of look like a d. <SNIP> > I could not find her in 1860 Gwinnett but I still say there > are a lot of people missing from that census. I believe some of the pages may > have been lost, possibly by the original census census taker who just > renumbered what he had. People who are there in 1850 and 1870 are missing from 1860. > <SNIP> I've been digging in a Missouri 1870 census for missing relations. These things I've found to prove the census taker lost pages. 1. Several families and townships ended at the bottom of a page and there was no summary on those townships. The odds of family and township ending exactly at the bottom of a page is one in 32. Half the townships ending that way, that is very suspicious. 2. There was a summery of each census published a few years after the census, like 1873 for that 1870 census. This summary showed county details like totals by township, sex, slave status, and other statistics without names of individuals. You can compare those township and county totals to what you find on the microfilm to see if the census pages were lost by the census taker or the census bureau. I don't know any way to recover any such lost pages these days but at least some hint can be developed on why people were missing that should have been there. The one always wonders if the census taker decided to not take the trails least traveled and so ignored a portion of the population. More so if he was told he might not be received cordially (e.g. treated as a revenuer). Even when he found families, sometimes different parties answered the questions one decade (or maybe a nosy neighbor) and things were missed. In one of my family listings, the kids were ten years older the second census, but Ma and Pa were only 9 years older and Ma and Pa's birthplaces moved a state or three. > Judy K. in Newnan, GA > GGG granddaughter of Nathan Fowler > > Gerald J. -- Dr. Gerald N. Johnson <[email protected]>