Saturday, January 3, 2009

Saturday Night Fun - Census Whacking

Have you heard of Census Whacking? It started in England where bored genealogists decided to pick a name off the census records and then find out something more about that person.

When it hit the USA, it evolved into finding really strange and funny names in the census records. For example, My Census Whacking Index is posted here.

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to find a unique name in the census (first name, last name, combination, etc. - any census!) and post it on your own blog, or in my comments. If you want to do more than one - go for it.

If you are census-impaired, or just too busy, then tell me which name that you found in my Census Whacking Index posts, or on The Genealogue, that strikes you as really funny, strange or even obscene.

If you come up with good new ones, I'll even use them in my Genealogy is Fun presentation in three weeks!

3 comments:

footnoteMaven said...

Mother Campion was a 55 year old male who immigrated to this country from Ireland. He lived in Quincy, Illinois, in 1870 with his wife Margaret and was a blacksmith.


1870 U.S. census, Adams County, Illinois, population schedule, Quincy, p. 515, dwelling 682, family 618, Mother Campion (Head); digital images. Heritage Quest (http://persi.heritagequestonline.com/ : retrieved 5 May 2008); citing NARA microfilm publication M593, roll 187.

-fM

Abba-Dad said...

Elector U Brannon was my wife's Great-Grandaunt.I have seen her name spelled so many ways including, Lector and Electra.

In the 1920 Census she Elector Austin:

Year: 1920; Census Place: Fullers, Cobb, Georgia; Roll: T625_244; Page: 2A; Enumeration District: 43; Image: 740.

Oh and I award you the Proximidade Award!

I think your blog is the best geneablog out there and I read it on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis :-)

John said...

January Furgerson appears 6 months old in the 1870 census, living in Jacks, Laurens, South Carolina. Son of Josephine.

The name reappears in 1920 in Beat 5, Issaquena, Mississippi. This January Furgerson was born in 1873, supposedly in Mississippi. He is married, with two children. Mother Fannie is also in the household. He is in the 1910 census as January Fergeson in the same location, with mother and step-father.

Whether Josephine became Fannie, and if so what happened to their SC origins, is unclear.