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.








One response
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.