Don't trust the census-taker... Or the transcriber... Or other people who touched the census

As amazing as it is to have access to all of the census records online and the great transcriptions and search tools out there, you can't always trust what you see. I was dealing with an entry this morning that was all kinds or wrong. Over the span of 115 years 3 different entities have messed up this record...

This image is from the 1900 census entry for my 2x great grandfather John Louis Schoonover. The first person to blow it was the enumerator. He correctly put down John as the head of the household and listed him as a widow. Then he put down his son Bert as "Pert" - really? Whose name is "Pert"? Even 100 years ago that was not a name. That's strike 1. Strike 2 is listing Bert's wife, Mary L (Turner) as "Wife" making it look like she was John's wife and Bert's mother. Then continuing on this flawed line of thinking, Bert and Mary's son Ansel is listed as "Son." Strike 3. Census enumerator out.

Second person messing up this record was whoever at the census department (probably mid-1900s?) who decided to write some kind of coding into the same space where John's name is written. I don't know what these numbers mean, but there's a lot of other blank space on this page to put it. Thanks to them, "John" is practically unintelligible. Sloppy sloppy.

And finally, Ancestry's transcription robots have read this written-over record as "Jason" Schoonover. Not helpful. Especially in these lazy days of genealogy where people blindly copy hints into their trees as gospel. I wonder how many Jason Schoonovers born in Virginia in 1827 are lurking about in Ancestry member trees thanks to the census clerk who scribbled on this important document.

So be careful! Check your facts. And don't trust anyone on the Internet... Or the census bureau.