21 April 2014

Comparing Population and Agricultural Schedules in 1885--Different Names for the Same People

Agricultural census schedules are not always just about farming. They can also provide clues to what is in the population schedules as well.

Finding Tamme Tammen in the 1885 population schedules for the Nebraska State Census proved to be somewhat difficult.

Finding him in the agricultural census schedules (shown on the left hand side in the image below) was not a problem. He was enumerated as Talman F. Tammen on that enumeration.

Before manually browsing the images (which would not have been too hard), I decided to search for the other farmers on the ag census and see if I could find them. My theory was that they should be listed together. I also thought that the reason I couldn't find him was because the name was probably blurry or difficult to read on the population schedule.

A search for R. Costin located the page on which Tammen is listed. His last name certainly appears to be "Tammen" to me, but that's probably because that's what I'm looking for.

The interesting this is that he is listed as "Tom" in the population schedule and Talman in the agricultural schedule. His ag schedule neighbor, John F. Gronewold, is apparently listed as John Griswold in the population schedule.

There are several lessons here other than the approach I took to finding Tamme in the population schedule. Names can easily be anglicized--but the surprise here was that the enumerator chose to use different names in the differing enumerations. That just struck me as interesting.

And I have not even analyzed the ag schedule for additional clues. But it did help me to interpret "correctly" the names from the population schedule.