Hi, Patricia I know that there were probably *some* kinds of constant patterns, but these would probably vary wildly by location and census year......... The pattern for any one area might depend on which volunteer transcriber got handed which batch of pages from that census year. The one thing that has helped me in trying to puzzle these things out...... Try to move forward in the census years to find the earliest one that is *not* alphabetized. Unfortunately, your guy of primary interest may be dead...... But look for any that might pertain to your surname. And then make notes of the neighbors' surnames, at least for two pages before and after your cluster. You might find that there are two or three "clusters" of your surname in the county or district, but jot down the related surnames for each cluster. Then move back into the transcribed info, and follow the patterns of neighbors. "Compare and contrast", as we use to say in high school <sorry. grin.> I do not have this experience in Randolph, but in Davidson, you might find a cluster of Hoovers who were associated with Gosses, and Crosses, and Smiths, and Hedricks and another cluster of Hoovers who were more associated with Redwines and Millikins and Smiths and Davises......... Track the neighbors, and watch the patterns. This will not easily tell you who lived next door to whom in the transcribed censuses, but it can lead you to what specific area of the county your person of interest was *living in* at the time. Besides, you can learn a lot from following neighbors. I first did this from, well, necessity. As above <wry gr>. But now, I just do it. There are amazing things that fall out from the following of neighbors. Best of luck, Linda >Thanks to all who answered question re census for Randolph Co . I guess I >kind of knew that they had been transcribed however , what I wondered was >what significance was there to each of the sections? were they a page ,?or a >twp or what ?I see that there are a group of alphabetized names and extras >just added on the end ,would that be a page on the original census, ?or >perhaps a twp ? and then would the next group of names being alphabetized >a different page of the original census , or a different twp ? What do the >sections of alphabetized names represent? >Patricia Caviness Perkins