Hello List, I tried again to find my mom and her brother, Claude, in the 1940 census for The Dalles, Wasco County, Oregon. Their surname was CAMPBELL. Still no success using the surname index. I had found my grandma and she was where she should be. But my mom and her brother, Claude, were not with grandma. One of the GFO Research Assistants mentioned something she had read on the Stephen P. Morse web page about the 1940 census and the way the pages were numbered. The first time the census taker visited, he was to use pages numbered from 1A to 60B. The second visit, to get names of people missed the first time, he was to start the list on page 61A. The people he found in Hotels, flophouses and the transients, were to be listed on pages starting at number 81A. Since I still couldn't find mom and Claude using CAMPBELL, I went to Stephen Morse's web page and put in the E.D. number I had found for my grandma. I finally found mom and Claude on page 61B, the page numbering set up for the census taker's 2nd visit. But, when I found them, it looked like their surname was DEAN and not CAMPBELL. The person above them was an Anna DEAN, and my mom was listed as daughter and Claude was listed as son. All the other information given about mom and Claude fit. I wouldn't have thought these two were mine if they hadn't been listed together. Then I noticed the family number, on the left side of the census form, was #88, and this was the same number that my grandmother had on page 3B, at the census taker's first visit. The person below them was named Martha, and she was listed a niece with a family #65. At the bottom of this page, in the "Supplementary Questions," it showed Martha's surname as CALDWELL, not DEAN. When I went back to find who was listed for family #65, I found the same CALDWELL surname. This was just luck because a niece may not always have the same surname as the head of the house. I went back to the Family Search surname index and typed in the surname DEAN, using the first names of my mom and Claude. The indexer had used the surname DEAN instead of CAMPBELL. No wonder I hadn't been able to find them in the 1940 Oregon Index. I was looking for them under CAMPBELL, not DEAN. I'd still be looking and wondering where my mom and Claude could possibly be if I hadn't noticed that their family number was the same as the census taker used for grandma on the first visit. Bottom line.....we need to pay attention to the family numbers on any pages starting from 61A, for the census taker's second visits. Check these family numbers with those from the census taker's first visit. If surnames aren't given, and only family numbers are listed with each given name, I'm thinking surnames used indexing these 2nd visits will have to be redone, pages 61A forward. And, there still may not be anyway to make sure the surname is correct. This may be especially true if the person's relationship to head of house isn't a wife, son or single daughter. http://stevemorse.org/census/1940census.htm Getting Ready for the 1940 Census: Searching without a Name Index Stephen P. Morse In the section almost at the bottom of this web page article is the following section regarding: "The Numbering Gap (or why are so many pages missing?)"