As one who has spent many hours transcribing the census records and currently the OPR films, I could not agree more with Libby's observations. Census records cannot be taken as gospel (sorry folks) as there are just to many errors when one set of records are matched against another. Names, ages, place of birth, individuals in a household, etc just don't tie up. When one combines the misunderstanding of questions, the incorrect recording of the replies, any hearing problems that the enumerator might have, the inability of anyone in the household to read the recorded details and so make immediate corrections, omissions, rounding of ages (up and down) and then the transcribing errors made on recording the sometimes almost illegible writing (yes I know that I will have made some), caution is needed when using such records. I would like to think that my transcriptions might be a little more accurate as I do at least have some knowledge of the area and therefore can make out names, places, etc that would defeat others but you will still find a fair number of asterisks in the census transcriptions where I have not been able to make out the writing. Whilst on this topic, one of the things that surprised me when tracing families through the various census records are the number of families 'missing' from one census i.e. there are there in 1861 and 1881 but not on the island in 1871. I am talking whole families, not one or two individuals from a family. It is reasonable to expect a number of families to leave the island and then return but the numbers are far greater than I would have expected taking account of the difficulties of transporting a whole family at that time. Is this therefore another reason to doubt the accuracy of the census taking. Food for thought! Ian -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ .