Tim and WRG This is called taking a 6th or 7th look. When Tim said he wasn't seeing what I was seeing I figured I had finally lost my mind. So I went back and reviewed again what I was looking at. Lo and behold - after about 10 minutes of additional scrutiny, and finding other pages that looked different, I saw that the microfilmed copy of the page with my ancestors was overlaid and the sheet was partially duplicated to the side. The top column identifiers are missing so I only counted across to fill in my copy. But, as I looked to see if it could be a case of the ink soaking through and making false hash marks, I began to see clearly that numbers were written identically and the tallies on the bottom of the page confirmed the number repetition/duplication. I swear, I looked at this over and over again, because I just could not reconcile all these slaves in Massachusetts. But I was not as observant as I should have been. I have not see this happen before where a portion of the page is copied a second time on the same microfilm and I was not looking for that as a possible explanation. From now on I will watch closer for that. But it appears that the people of Ashburnham were not slave holders and I am so very much relieved. And all those Whitneys that were neighbors to my Willards were not slave holders either. Tim - thanks for telling me that you didn't see this, because it made me look again and scrutinize what I was seeing. All is well in Ashburnham. Jo In a message dated 4/7/2007 3:11:29 P.M. Central Daylight Time, tim@greenscourt.com writes: Which Whitney and which column are you referring to? I'm not seeing this as I look at the online scans. I show that 1820 had 6 columns for free white males 5 columns for free white females 1 column for foreigners 1 column for those in agriculture 1 column for those in commerce 1 column for those in manufacturing 8 columns for slaves and 1 column for all others Send me the details of what you're seeing. ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.