All Census Information

Question

Sometimes, it needs to be mentioned that census information is self-reported. On the 1900 census, there are brothers William and Thomas Hannigan.  According to teh census they were born in Canada and Illinois, respectively.

They worked in a mine. William fell and died.  His body and his brother came to Philadelphia.  In fact, they were both born in Ireland and were ten years younger than they had mentioned.

If William hadn't died, it would have been inearly mpossible to identify these people.

Clearly, Thomas and William were either hiding or having a bit of fun.

Sometimes census information is reported by people who don't know that much about a family.

The idea is just not to take every bit of information on the census as 'gospel truth'.

Answer 1

Agree, it's not all that unusual to see data in a census record that isn't consistent with other records -- ages, estimated dates of birth, and spelling of names seem pretty common.  I had one case where a married couple had separated, and each of them reported a marital status of "widowed" in the next census.  In cases where you can't resolve an inconsistency, I think it's OK to include the info and just say that you have records with conflicting data.  But in cases where something is just flat wrong, and you have no way of knowing, there's not much you can do.

Comments

Great point, Dennis. One should definitely be wary of "widow" notations-- especially (from my review) 1900, 1910, 1920. I've found many cases of widows on one page, and their divorced husbands elsewhere in the same census.

Answer 2

Yes, all sources, of every possible kind are subject to errors.  Nothing is immune.  Census records - these people went door to door and often if someone wasn't home, they might have asked a neighbor for information.  Or, maybe a kid was the only one around to answer the questions.  Of course, I have no idea about your own research, but maybe, just maybe you have found the similar but the wrong people in that 1900 census.  There are a lot of differences, as you say.  Alternate spellings/bad spellings often lead the search engine not to display the intended results.

Edit - I think I just found who you were talking about in Teller County, CO.  The census says William was a clerk in a General Store and his brother Thomas was a civil engineer.  Curious, it says William came to America in 1862 and both their fathers were born in Ireland and mother in Canada

Comments

That is them.  And this William

https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/JDLP-QJM

was sent home to Philadelphia, with a brother Thomas.  Their family plot is on Find a Grave.

I believe they were involved in recreational lying.  Its may be inherited. Thomas' son was an FBI agent.  http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hannigan-164

I use census information for a beginning piece of research, but find a lot of people will eliminate possible relatives because the information on the census isn't precise.