I had to laugh the other day when I decided to look up my ancestors in the 1910 census. Imagine my surprise when I found that my grandmother Martha was listed as a 2-year-old son "Martin." The only thing I could figure out is that her parents (who had immigrated to the United States in 1905) had such thick German accents that when they responded "Martha" it sounded like "Marta" and the census taker understood "Martin." I'm still not sure why he didn't double check the sex of the child though. Oh well, it made me laugh. It's also a caution in family history work to double check all your sources and make sure you have more than one source whenever possible to verify your information.
No comments:
Post a Comment