On Sat, 29 May 2004, Santa Traugott wrote: > The U.S. census does not necessarily give consistent information about the > same person from census to census. One reason, as I understand it, is that > information was often obtained from an "informant" who may not have known > very much and was guessing--the informant could have been a 14 year old > child of the household, a domestic, or in some cases if desperate, a > neighbor. It's frustrating, isn't it! It's also the case that spelling of names was not as rigidly standardized 150 years ago as it is today -- especially among immigrant families. One German family, the owners for decades of an old house I was researching, seemed to be listed with a different surname spelling in each city directory year, let alone each census. My own surname, Kestenbaum, emerged as a standard spelling only around 1915. Before that, there were a great many variations. My great grandfather kept the eccentric spelling Kestnbaum, perhaps to distinguish himself from another Benjamin Kestenbaum who was also in the shoe repair business on the Lower East Side of New York City at the time. My father, who was raised in foster homes, ended up with the more standard spelling of Kestenbaum. But people outside my immediate family who spell the name that way have no known relation to me. Larry --- Lawrence Kestenbaum, polygon@potifos.com The Political Graveyard, http://politicalgraveyard.com Mailing address: P.O. Box 2563, Ann Arbor MI 48106