52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – Week 37: Mistaken Girl for a Boy in 1880
This is my second year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow . I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past . I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways. Mistakes can happen when we make wrong assumptions. We misread an entry because of poor or fading handwriting. We think the woman in the 1860 census is the mother of the children listed, when she could be the second wife and step-mother. The records we look at could have errors. The parish priest baptizes several children on one Sunday and then mixes up their parent’s names in the record book. The county clerk of deeds fails to copy all the items in a land description which makes it difficult to plat out because a call is missing. The census enumerator mishears a name or age or place of birth. Have you ever had a person listed in a census that you couldn’t find again? Sure, they may have died between ...