I was working on a German immigrant to Davenport, Iowa, who arrived in the 1850s as a single woman. She married a few years later and an older man was enumerated with her family in every federal census through 1880. His last name was her maiden name.
It turned out he was her father. That was my assumption and research later indicated it was a correct one.
What I assumed was that her father immigrated by himself because there’s never a wife with him in a US census. That was a wrong assumption as I discovered him with his wife (whose name was already known from other records) in the 1856 Iowa state census. She must have died by the 1860 census enumeration.
I assumed also that the couple had several children other than the woman I was originally researching. I spent some time looking for them in Iowa because that is where the parents settled and I assumed they would have other children in the area who also immigrated. Research revealed that there were no other children. The daughter who married in the 1850s was their only child. Looking for others was a good idea, but they were not found because they did not exist.
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