People listed on 1950 census records
I have noticed on some 1950 records all people on page or sheet are listed as family even if they are all in different households. Is this correct are they all related in some way that I'm not finding?
Best Answer
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It definitely looks incorrect to me.
The image's division of the list into dwellings via lines, as well as via the handwriting in the initial columns, is very clear.
I guess the issue may be that the OCR has failed to pick up anything /except/ the handwriting in the yellow area, which may indicate difficulty in automatically identifying the areas of the page that need OCR'ing; OCR output is needed for dividing up residents into dwellings just as much as it is for identifying names.
Suggest you use the Feedback tab to report this.
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Answers
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The 1950 census was the first big project indexed by handwriting OCR. There are errors.
It's impossible to give an absolute answer without seeing the precise page(s).0 -
If you could look at Andrew Preston LJGK-L2H hint for 1950 source linker lists people on next page continued listing of family, it continues listing people on sheet. Are they all considered family as well or is this in error? This is not first time I've seen this.
"United States Census, 1950", , FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6XPS-7461 : Wed Mar 20 01:47:46 UTC 2024), Entry for Helen J Hackler and Joan E Hackler, 10 April 1950.
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In my experience, all indexes — whether human- or computer-generated — are rife with errors. Use them only for their intended purpose: finding the actual records. (And if only the index is available, treat the information from it as uncertain and unverified.)
For reference, Andrew Preston Hackler's index detail page is here: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6XPS-746G. It looks like something went wrong with the family groupings: the two youngest Hackler siblings are on the following page, but they're added only as "other people on record" — along with a dozen unrelated people, from the following fourteen lines of that next page.
Technically, we (the users of FS) have the means of correcting this error, via the index-editor-and-image-viewer that was rushed into use specifically for the 1950 census, several years ago. However, that rush job is still generating problems: the resident gremlins are still causing unwanted changes (such as removing viewing permissions, or deleting/no longer showing fields), especially after edits affecting the structure of the index, such as household groupings. Therefore, I think it's best to ignore the misgroupings: attach the index to your family members, then dismiss the "unfinished attachments" notices.
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