Asked a librarian in Spokane for help with old census records and she pulled up something I never would have tried | Ask A Search Nerd - Pinecone Attack
Asked a librarian in Spokane for help with old census records and she pulled up something I never would have tried
I needed to find my great grandpa's name from a 1910 census but he spelled it 4 different ways, so I was stuck. She told me to search the town name plus the street he lived on instead of his name, and his actual page popped up in 2 minutes. Has anyone else had luck searching by address when the name gets butchered?
My grandma's family came from a tiny town in Kentucky called Bug, which nobody could ever find on a map. Turned out the census taker spelled it "Buggs" with two Gs in 1920 and then just "Bugg" in 1930, so the town itself was as messed up as your grandpa's name. What finally worked was hunting down the school district, since the whole county only had like three of them back then. I spent maybe six weekends on that before a volunteer at the historical society pointed me to the district records, and boom, there they all were. Funny how the workarounds always come from people who actually know the records instead of the search box.