A new (and different) error in the 1900 U.S. Census

Fredelas from reddit

@N Tychonievich I came across this record tonight, which has the widowed head of household repeated several times for each of her children:

Mary Mooney, "United States Census, 1900" • FamilySearch

I'm not sure how else to report this problem.

N Tychonievich

@Fredelas from reddit My apologies that your post got lost in the shuffle. I will report the error to the group that can work on getting the index corrected. They have a large backlog of issues they are working through, so we can't predict how long it will take to get things corrected.

Meanwhile, you might consider using the image of the census page as your source, thus bypassing the flawed index. You can add it to your source box and attach from there. Or you can copy the URL of the image and use that to create a source.

Here are some Help Center articles that provide details for creating sources and using Source Box, in case this is a new idea for you:

https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-to-find-the-add-to-source-box-link

https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-attach-source-from-source-box

https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/from-my-source-box-how-do-i-attach-a-source-to-a-person-in-family-tree

https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-create-a-source-in-family-tree

SandiCarpenter

I have found 5 incidents of where the 1900 US Federal Census duplicates the name of one family thereby making it not possible to link/attach the record to each family member. See Jacob Tickner GFN6-GKS, William Joseph Sidebotton, LD3M-31B, and August Fanzeler 9XS4-LR7. View attachments. It would be great to solve this issue so the census could be properly attach to the family

Thank you!

Áine Ní Donnghaile

This has been a known problem with the 1900 census for several months. Engineers have worked on it, and they thought they had it corrected. Unfortunately, the problem still persists.

I asked for an update a few days ago, but I have not had a reply so far.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

@SandiCarpenter, if you'd rather not wait for the index to be corrected, you can bypass it and attach the image of the census page directly as a source. There are actually multiple methods for doing that.

Using the "Source Box" button on the image. You may want to have the image open in two tabs, because unfortunately, clicking the button and choosing "Add to My Source Box" results in an immovable popup that obscures the image that you're trying to work with. In the popup, you can edit the title -- feel free to remove the URL that it sticks in there, because it'll be repeated in the (uneditable) Citation field -- and type in a note or description.

Using "Add New Source" on a profile's Sources tab. Have the image open in another tab, then go to a profile you want to attach it to, go to the Sources tab, click "Add Source", and choose "Add New Source". Copy the URL from the image's tab and paste it into the appropriate field, type in a title, fill out the other fields as you feel appropriate, make sure the "Add Source to My Source Box" checkbox is selected, and click Save. (Everything is optional except the title.)

Using the "Create Source" button in your Source Box. This works similarly to the previous method, except instead of going to a tree profile, click your account name at the top right and choose "Source Box", then click "Create Source".

Once the source is in your source box, you can attach it to profiles from either each profile's Sources tab, or from your account's Source Box.

SandiCarpenter

Thank you so much for checking on this, I will look forward to having it corrected at some point in the future.