About the Ancestry.com online version of the 1930 census. I am told that much of the indexing was /is outsourced, and that the error rate is pretty high in the indexing. Just yesterday, I discovered that Ancestry.com has also used some of the published census indexes, which in the case of Texas in 1870 has some gross errors. See the paragraph regarding Uvalde.. However, in searching for a Williams family in Texas, I found the census-taker himself had left off the final s of the surname. This put the surname in an entirely different Soundex [index]. That is what my friend, who is more computer-saavy than I did. She said, Give me an unusual first name in the family. I provided such a given name, and the county, and yes, we spotted the family--in the right place, at the right time, with the right number of children but without the final s in the Surname.. My advice to any census-searcher: If you are certain WHERE the family lived, see if you can browse [either on film or online] the entire county. For San Antonio or other Texas cities in the 1930s this could be difficult. On film, it is somewhat easier. (I did this when I first started out. Before the Model-T Ford came along, you will probably spot cousins, aunts and uncles, and perhaps grandparents of the person you seek.) Always change the vowel when searching, and think of all the ways a census-taker might misspell, or the present-indexer could misspell. Another problem with indexes, even printed ones. I was searching for a German surname in Uvalde Co. and any other place in Texas. The surname was not that common in the 1870s. The printed 1870 census index indexes the surname with Upshur [not Uvalde] as the county. And this error is repeated in the online index for Ancestry.com. Garbage in [in this case unskilled or ignorant of geography help], garbage out. Of course, there are always hold-outs who avoided the census-taker, or were perhaps on a train or working on someone else's farm or ranch. In the 2000 census, in my punctuated-with-hills and canyons neighborhood, my neighbor, who had volunteered to take the census, said he found many holdouts!!! He had to make repeated calls, left notices, etc. Still, no results! If tax lists have been filmed for the time period when your ancestors lived in an area, or if there are city directories [as there are for San Antonio], use those as census substitutes. City directories were generally published every two years, and one can frequently find a family in such a city [not telephone] directory. I don't use CyndisList much any more, but I bet she has a link to Directories, or City Directories. The Family History Library at Salt Lake City has films or fiche of some city directories, but a public library near the place where your ancestor lived may produce some directories for you. (When the old Library in San Antonio was near the River, I used several city directories of San Antonio to track down my great-grandparents--the husband's occupation, his employer, his residence.) Some of us need to admit that we cannot always do the research ourselves--some professionals, particularly in the State where your ancestor lived may know of some oddball [to you and me] records. Court records, particularly in sparsely settled communities, can give you some fabulous stories. Murder, dirvorce, debt, orphans records, etc. And old newspapers, if still intact, or filmed, are wonderful. Good luck! E.W.Wallace