{"id":8580,"date":"2018-06-29T14:12:31","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T19:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=8580"},"modified":"2018-06-29T14:20:59","modified_gmt":"2018-06-29T19:20:59","slug":"8580","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/2018\/06\/29\/8580\/","title":{"rendered":"Only Initials?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-8581\" src=\"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/initials-census.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"715\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/initials-census.jpg 715w, https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/initials-census-300x126.jpg 300w, https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/initials-census-624x262.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 715px) 100vw, 715px\" \/>Some census takers were plain lazy, some couldn&#8217;t spell, and some didn&#8217;t care.<\/p>\n<p>After you have exhausted all the variations on your ancestor&#8217;s first and middle names, consider that they might have been enumerated with just their initials. Or perhaps their first initial and their middle name spelled out. I have seen entire townships where no one apparently had a first name and everyone was named with their initials. I have seen locations where census takers used initials for non-English names instead of trying to spell them correctly.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe your ancestor was enumerated as J. Smith in the 1860 census. Now there&#8217;s a real problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some census takers were plain lazy, some couldn&#8217;t spell, and some didn&#8217;t care. After you have exhausted all the variations on your ancestor&#8217;s first and middle names, consider that they might have been enumerated with just their initials. Or perhaps their first initial and their middle name spelled out. I have seen entire townships where [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":153978,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/153978"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}