My friends - I want to stop by and give you the solution to the latest Skills Puzzler. There were 27 folks who sent their thoughts to me about this Puzzler, which is a fairly good response for one of these items. You will recall that our goal was to find what had happened to the family of John Boatswanger, as he appears with his family in the 1850 census, but in 1860, there are no Boatswangers at all in the same county, nor in any of the surrounding counties. Our specific task was to try to use the 1860 census alone to track this group down. Everyone who attempted this Puzzler was on the right track, as all believed that John Boatswanger had died in the decade between 1850 and 1860, and that the elder Boatswanger man, who may well have been John's father, had also died. Most who tried this Puzzler felt that the next step ought to be an effort to find Asa Jones in the 1860 census, since John's wife Penelope probably married Asa(if he was not a relative), or she might be living in Asa's household if he was, in fact, a relative. The latter possibility would seem to ruled out, since the 1860 census had no Boatswanger names anywhere in it. A number of people said that we should check the neighbors for clues. That approach comes very close to the mark. Probably the easiest - and perhaps the quickest - next step to be taken in this case(and this was the one used in the real situation) was to re-scan the 1860 census for this county in its entirety, in an effort to see if we could find a female of the approximate right age, with the given name Penelope. That given name, while not unheard of, is somewhat unusual, and would stand out easily in a census search. Upon checking that county's census again in its entirety, we found a Penelope, age 36, born KY, appearing as the wife of one Martin Scott. It appeared that Penelope had remarried. The next task was to see if that household had two children in it with the names George and Mary. We did find a George, age 16, and a Mary, age 14, in that household, both born KY. There were other children older and some younger. What had happened, when the census taker enumerated that household, is a fairly common error that is seen in census rolls all the way up to about 1910. The census taker had started listing the children of Martin Scott, whose surnames would have been Scott, and then, when he came to George and Mary, he simply went right along without showing that the surname changed for those two children, or it could be that whoever was giving the information to the census taker did not tell him that those two children's surname was Boatswanger. As a result, they would appear to be Scott children. George Boatswanger died in 1922 in the same county, leaving a will. As for Joseph Boatswanger and Asa Jones - Joseph's grave marker was discovered later in the research, showing that he had died in 1858. Asa Jones disappeared after the 1850 census and was probably, in fact, a farm laborer who worked for John Boatswanger, and either died himself, or moved on when John died. Penelope's maiden name, found much later, was Disponet, so we can reasonably assume that Asa was not her brother, unless he was a half or step brother. Knowing about the types of errors that census takers made as they went about their business can sometimes give us a bit of an edge when we have problems such as this. Also, recognizing the unusual nature of a given name can be an advantage as we try to find that person in another household. Finally, I am asked frequently if the surnames I use in these Puzzlers are the actual names that were involved in the original problem. The answer is "No" - these are other names, most of them real(even the odd ones), but not connected to the actual case. I used real given and surnames in one of the early Puzzlers I posted, and it was sent to another list which had people researching those very names, and I was flooded with inquiries and conjectures - it took a week to get out from under that stream of mail. So I learned a valuable lesson from that. -B ============================================================