From a while back…

Did the census taker reverse the first and last names? It can happen with anyone, but the possibility increases if the individual’s name is in a foreign language and they are a recently arrived immigrant. This man’s name was Focke Meyer, but he was listed as last name Focke and first name Myer.

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  1. Or maybe the census taker (or information provider?) just left the last name out all together.
    I had a really hard time finding my great great grandfather, Samuel Lloyd Raffensparger, in the 1900 census. Figuring someone just butchered his last name, I starting scanning the online 1900 census index for every Samuel of the right age and reading each last name to see if it could be a misreading or mispronunciation of Raffensparger. I quickly ran into Samuel Lloyd in Anniston, Alabama, where family stories say the family had briefly lived around 1900. I checked it out despite the last name being nothing like Raffensparger, and found it was the family I was looking for.

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