MARY KIRCHER RODDY
  • Home
  • Coaching and Research
  • Lectures
    • Upcoming and Past Presentations
  • Searching For Stories blog
  • Publications
  • Contact
  • Resources
  • Privacy Policy

Searching for Stories

But What About the Other Side??!!!

9/4/2018

1 Comment

 
I was recently looking at an agricultural census schedule.  For those not familiar with the Agricultural “Ag” censuses, they were taken in 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880.  If your ancestor listed “Farmer” as his occupation, you definitely want to look for the “matching” agricultural census which will tell you about livestock he owned, acres planted, how many bushels of this or pounds of that he grew and more.  It is a great snapshot into your ancestor’s life as a farmer.  Take the opportunity to compare your ancestor to his neighbors – calculate things like yield per acre, etc. to see how productive he might have been in relation to his fellow farmers.  And look at him over time – if you can find him in 1860 and 1870, does he have more land?  Does he have more cows?  Did he drop that unproductive rye crop and plant more acres in wheat? 
​
Ancestry has filmed these agricultural censuses as well as some other “non-population” schedules. 
 
The way the 1850 schedules are arranged, the farmers’ names are written down the left side of the page and boxes were filled in for each column as they applied.  There are 19 columns on the front side of the page.  After the enumerator asked Farmer John all the details on the front side, he’d flip the page over and ask another 27 columns (up to column 46).  Lots and lots of data!
 
The schedules were microfilmed and the images are available on Ancestry.  But there is a little bit of a problem.  Ancestry has arranged them by State, then county, then township, in alphabetical order of town.  Easy, right?  Well… if your ancestor is has is name on the last page of the town, you can’t “flip the page” to get to the
 back side of Farmer John’s page.  How are you going to know how many pounds of maple sugar or bushels of peas he produced????
 
I was looking at Franklin Township, Delaware County, New York.  “My” guy, “Enas B. Tisher” is on line 1 of image 10.  As you can see, that is image 10 of 10.  Where’s the back side of his page?!!  I can’t type 11 in the box at the bottom- that won’t work.  
Picture
Census Year: 1850; Census Place: Franklin, Delaware, New York; Archive Collection Number: A2; Roll: 2; Page: 313; Line: 1; Schedule Type: Agriculture; citing Nonpopulation Census Schedules for New York, 1850-1880. Microfilm. New York State Library, Documents and Digital Collections, Albany.

​If I click on the filmstrip icon next to the 10 I see the start of another township, Hamden, which apparently has 5 images. Maybe that will be it…
 

Picture

​But nooooooo.  Look in the upper right hand corner of Enas Tisher’s page.  In (sloppy) black marker it says 313.  Hamden’s first page has the number 259.  So… somebody somewhere had a stack of these agricultural enumerations and started numbering the pages in numerical order (I mean really, how else would you number pages?!)  But Ancestry, thought these should really be in alphabetical order, by town name.

Picture
Census Year: 1850; Census Place: Franklin, Delaware, New York; Archive Collection Number: A2; Roll: 2; Page: 259; Line: 1; Schedule Type: Agriculture; citing Nonpopulation Census Schedules for New York, 1850-1880. Microfilm. New York State Library, Documents and Digital Collections, Albany.

​So how did I finally find Mr. Tisher’s back page?  I looked at the filmstrip, scrolled forward or backward to the first image for every town, and when I finally got to the town of Masonville, I could see, right there in that same old black marker, “315.”  The numbers on the left side of the page?  Yep, that’s exactly the data I was seeking for my old buddy Enas.  3 Bushels of peas, and 400 lbs of maple sugar (I think…)
 
Don’t take my word for it, compare the data numbers on the left side of the image with those on Enas Tisher’s page on image 10 in Fisher.  The same.  But the numbers on image 1 of Masonville, “black marker” page 315, were written in someone else’s handwriting.
 
Lesson learned, those “flip side” of the pages are somewhere.  You just need to be a little creative to find them.

Picture
Census Year: 1850; Census Place: Franklin, Delaware, New York; Archive Collection Number: A2; Roll: 2; Page: 315; Line: 1; Schedule Type: Agriculture; citing Nonpopulation Census Schedules for New York, 1850-1880. Microfilm. New York State Library, Documents and Digital Collections, Albany.
1 Comment
Melora Hiler
11/29/2018 01:10:49 pm

Thanks for this information. When you wrote of comparing crops and farm production of farmers, how do we know what was normal? For all we know, maybe the farmer's neighbors all had below-normal production, or above-normal production . . .

Reply

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Mary Kircher Roddy is a genealogist, writer and lecturer, always looking for the story.  Her blog is a combination of the stories she has found and the tools she used to find them.

    Read more of Mary's writings at "Adventures of A Broad Abroad" and at Letters from Limerick

    Archives

    April 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016

    Categories

    All
    Achard
    Ahern
    Aldrich
    Amador County Genealogy
    Ancestry.com
    Archives
    Blair County
    Bradley Family
    Brannack
    Brannock
    Brown
    Brown Family
    California Genealogy
    Cemetery
    Census
    Citations
    City Directories
    Clark County
    Death Records
    DNA Strategies
    Education
    Enslaved People Research
    FamilySearch
    Family Stories
    Fields Family
    Freuhauf
    Genealogy Conferences
    Genealogy Education
    German Research
    Germany
    Graham Family
    Grandparents
    Hardy
    Hartmann
    Indexes
    Ireland
    Kircher
    Letters
    Lunenburg
    Map
    Mapping Tools
    Midwest Resources
    Midwives
    Military
    Newspaper
    Newspapers
    New York
    Ohio
    Pennsylvania
    ProGen
    Railroad
    Records
    Research Techniques
    San Francisco
    Sonoma County Genealogy
    Spreadsheets
    Springer
    Tiburon
    Timelines
    Virginia
    Virginia Genealogy
    Vital Records
    War
    Webster
    World War II Research
    Writing

     Subscribe in a reader

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    Picture
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Coaching and Research
  • Lectures
    • Upcoming and Past Presentations
  • Searching For Stories blog
  • Publications
  • Contact
  • Resources
  • Privacy Policy