Posts in May 13, 2026

There were three matches to my search of the 1850 census for Washington/Sullivan Counties in Tennessee for name/age combination of a person I had traced from their death certificate back until the 1860 census when they were first enumerated with their husband. I didn’t have a father’s name because the early 20th century death certificate said father was “unknown.” I wasn’t certain how accurate the mother’s name was either to be honest. I cannot just grab one of those 1850 census entries and say “she’s the one.” I did what I usually do in these cases–try to find the people who matched my search term in later census years. Two of them were easy to eliminate as being the person of interest–20 years later the same name women […]