Census records? why are ages crossed out??

Question

A lot I come across they are crossed out??

Answer 1

In Britain, after the enumerator had completed calling on all the residents in his allocated area, his book went to the office of the returning officer where each entry was checked for errors in enumeration, and to make sure the enumerator had properly visited all the properties within his designated district, and had not strayed over borders, which would mean that some people could be counted twice, or not at all.

Entries had to be made under fairly precise headings, so that for example, a cowman, farm carter, and a farm labourer

should have all been entered as Agricultural Labourers or

Ag labs. Many other jobs were also supposed to have been entered under a collective name, and for some early census years ages were supposed to be rounded up or down to the nearest 5 or 10, some returning officers were more pedantic than others and all but obliterated the entries with their check marks, crossings out and corrections, they of course had no idea that we would be trying to read through their ink 160 years later. Every single census entry, and each item of that entry, had to be checked, an enormous ammount of information was extracted from the census returns, to give an accurate picture of the country at that time, which was of course the original purpose of the census.

Answer 2

watch tv man

Answer 3

In looking at the 1920 Soundex Cards on Microfilm many of the cards have black streaks or marks across the tops that make it very difficult to read the top line(s). It is thought that the years of clerks thumbing through these cards left dirt and smears on the cards. Some companies are using computers to enhance the information on the top of the cards and are releasing these indexes on CDs.

Answer 4

Probably realized they miscalculated. I understand in many cases, they took down the information on a pad and then put it on the census form when they got home.  When you look at the censuses you wished a lot of them did that.

When searching censuses you have to realize that the censuses were taken to get a head count of people and certain data that was wanted in that particular census year.

The census taker had no earthly idea that 100-150 years later, people would be pouring over those records trying to find their family history.

I have seen a lot of discrepancies and in quite a few cases I think I can understand why.   For instance on the 1880 census of Travis County, Texas, my grandfather was 3 years old.  It showed he had a younger brother named Emanuel, 1 year old.  I had never heard of an Emanuel, but realized his sister, Emma wasn't on it.  Even if the census taker saw Emma, he could have still made the mistake.  People put dresses on little boys until they were potty trained until sometime in the 1950s.  Someone told me the girls were frillier. I stated around the house she was probably wearing one of my grandfather's hand-me-downs.

Answer 5

Several reasons-maybe the person died, sometimes they are illiterate-my Grandfather never knew his age because his parents were illiterate and couldn't remember there were 12 kids-so sometimes it is because of a change-a kid grows up and remember s he came first-Ask the census is the easiest answer

Answer 6

Often they are the enumerators marks, he had the job of counting all the people on the page and making it into data, often as he went down the page he would make some sort of mark on it so that he knew he had counted that one.

You will also find that there is often something written over the  occupation to make it fit a standard list of jobs he had to allocate it to.

For example if it said "miner" you might find the word "coal" written over the top.

I am talking about UK census, don't know if they did the same with US.