Are all pre-1950 census forms fully transcribed?
On more than one occasion I can search for and locate an individual in a given census, and then they may not show up again for two or three censuses. For example, 1830 and 1850, or 1870 and 1910. (I've done plenty of name variant searches.)
It's certainly possible that households in those days sometimes simply weren't counted, but I wonder if I'm just assuming that if they'd been counted their form would have been transcribed and be searchable.
Have all 19th and early 20th century forms been fully transcribed? Or are there gaps where I would need to search the images myself?
Thanks!
Answers
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Many census records are extremely difficult to find through text searches due to transcription errors and census takers' poor handwriting.
If you know where the family lived, especially if it was a farm in a sparsely populated district, you can browse by location and read through maybe 20 to 50 pages in the district to find the needed records.
To get started, visit one of the collection pages and click "Browse All". For example:
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Thanks Robert! I've done a lot of searching of name variants, but I take your point that sometimes it could be so bad that one simply has to manually scan the records.
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