In the book, "Sawyer Families of New England," it has Marsha Sawyer b. 27 Oct 1838 marrying 7 Jul 1863 to Charles J. Richardson. BUT in the 1850 census for New Hampton, NH Marsha, age 12, is not listed with the family, but her sister Martha is. Martha Sawyer b. 9 Nov 1843 married William Watson. So what happened to Marsha Sawyer???? Ronald Colby rmcolby@micro-net.com 801-680-1317 Kearns, Utah I finally got my head together, now my body is falling apart. Home page: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~colby/colbyfam

Ronald: I supervised the census for my county in 1990. There are many mistakes made on the census so let me speculate what might be the reason that Marsha is not shown with her family. 1. She might not have been at home. People are/were supposed to be counted where they happen to be at the time of the census. 2. Whereever she might have been, the people there might not have listed her thinking that her family would do so. 3. The enumerator might have misunderstood and assumed that Marsha and Martha were one and the same person. The enumerator was not required to sight verify the people whose names he was recording. 4. The person giving the enumerator the family information might have just forgotten to mention Marsha. Often times it was not the head of household who gave the information. 5. Many people were uneducated and were not able to verify any of the information that the enumerator wrote. 6. Only one (1) copy of the census was made at the site. The enumerator was required to hand copy two (2) other copies before being finished with the census. This was long before copying machines or even carbon paper. Many mistakes were made in making the copies. The original census was sent to Washington, DC. The original might not have been the one that was microfilmed; the microfilm could have been of a copy with an error and Marsha not listed. Unless you can find her with another family or at a boarding school, etc., we will just have to be satisfied that she was somewhere since she showed up on later records. Hope this helps. Rob Ronald Colby wrote: > > > In the book, "Sawyer Families of New England," it has Marsha Sawyer b. 27 > Oct 1838 marrying 7 Jul 1863 to Charles J. Richardson. BUT in the > 1850 census for New Hampton, NH Marsha, age 12, is not listed with the > family, but her sister Martha is. > Martha Sawyer b. 9 Nov 1843 married William Watson. > > So what happened to Marsha Sawyer???? > > Ronald Colby > rmcolby@micro-net.com > 801-680-1317 > > Kearns, Utah (cut)