boren@randvax.UUCP (Pat Boren) (01/21/86)
A pointer about using the Soundex listings to the US censuses:
if the name you are looking for doesn't appear in the Soundex,
it doesn't mean that person won't be found in the census.
For example, I was looking up a David Wilkerson family that
lived in Greene Co. Missouri. I found them in the 1850-1870
censuses, then decided to use the Soundex to locate them in
the 1880 census. I never found them, so I went thru the census
line by line, and there they were, with an inadvertent line
(scratch?) thru the "l". The 'k' was open and looked like an 'h',
which led someone to code this as "Witherson". An easy mistake,
but Witherson sure won't look like Wilkerson in a Soundex.
Be sure to watch out for this sort of thing as best you can.
Happy hunting!
--
Patricia Boren
decvax!randvax!boren
boren@rand-unix.arpa