Don, There's no simple answer to your question. The census taker followed some sort of pattern and that pattern is sometimes clear. So, for example, in the first few pages of the census, he moved from the southern part of Smith Creek down to the North Fork and then on northward. After several such sweeps through the main valley, he moved into the Fort Valley, then into the Luray Valley. Now, this is all fairly linear rather than local. And, the census taker missed people. So, when the census taker was in the vicinity of Luray and moving up and down creeks, he was usually staying fairly close to Isabella because Isabella is so close to the Hawksbill, Dry Run, Pass Run, and the South Fork. So names near Isabella are often those of neighbors within a couple of miles. Then, near the end of the process, he seems to have taken a whirl-wind tour of the county to pick up all those missed people. At this point he was moving long distances between people, sort of like the New York cabdriver who takes tourists from JFK to the Statue of Liberty by way of the Bronx in order to rack up miles. Anyhow, I think I see him moving down the Luray Valley along the Blue Ridge to the Gooney Manor area, then back along the South Fork to the Milford Gap, into the Fort and up to maybe Moreland Gap, then picking up Pine Forge, then north along Smith Creek maybe to about Hawkinstown, then across the Massanutten, possibly through New Market Gap, and up Battle Creek to Alma. And, in the process, he may have picked up a few people who were not in his line of march. So, you can't say too much about Pine Forge neighbors. If your ancestors owned land, the 1815 land tax record might be more helpful; for some areas, that ties location within a radius of about 2 miles. Who are you looking at? Tom Pierce ----- Original Message ----- From: "Don Zochert" <[email protected]> To: "Shenandoah" <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2007 10:38 AM Subject: [VASHENAN] Locations in 1820 census > > I have target households in the 1820 Federal census in the Isabella > Furnace and Pine Forge areas or "townships," as Ancestry calls them, but > the designations appear to have been applied by Ancestry's indexers. On > the census sheets themselves, households actually enumerated at these > areas are marked off into a smaller sub-group, identified in the margin > and in some cases separately sub-totaled. In neither case are my > households in the smaller sub-group. > > Can the return be used to identify, even generally, where a target > individual lived? Or is it simply if you're within a sheet or two of > Pine Forge, you're "near" Pine Forge? > > Thanks for any clues on this point. > > > Don Zochert > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message >