[Genealogy] How Near Were Those Near Neighbors?, Save, and Cyber Sales

Sun Nov 30 16:23:11 CST 2025

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How Near Were Those Near Neighbors?

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How Near Were Those Near Neighbors?

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Documents can provide researchers with direct statements and indirect
statements. Direct statements state something clearly. Indirect statements
are different. They require some inference and “reading into” the document
to see information that’s not so obvious.

That’s how it is with certain documents that suggest two individuals were
“neighbors.” Tax and census records are organized geographically and were,
generally speaking, taken geographically. But sometimes there is a certain
amount of meandering around by the census taker or the tax
assessor–particularly in rural areas where the terrain and available roads
(or lack thereof) may dictate a very non-linear path.

This was driven home to me when I first viewed the 1940 census for my
paternal grandparents. I grew up slightly more than a mile from where my
paternal grandparents had lived in 1940. My maternal grandmother’s family
also lived in the same township. While I was decidedly not living in 1940,
many of the families had not moved significantly between then and my
arrival on the scene in the late 1960s–particularly those who owned a small
farm. As I read the census entries in the order of the enumeration, one
thing became clear to me:

*the enumerator meandered around the township*

People whose farms I knew were quite a distance from each other were on
adjacent pages. My paternal grandparents lived in the northeastern corner
of the township and families from the central and western portion of the
township were enumerated on nearby pages. Landowners who owned adjacent (or
very nearly adjacent properties) were several pages apart.

In any enumeration, there will be some eventual backtracking and people who
are “near neighbors” will not be enumerated as “near paper neighbors.” It
happens in urban areas where people are organized enough to live on
perfectly parallel streets that intersect at only right angles. It happens
in urban areas where streets are not always straight, not always parallel,
and do not always intersect at right angles. It happens in rural areas
where roads are not always straight and may meander for one reason or
another. And it certainly happens where geography forces the enumeration to
be done in a decidedly non-linear fashion.

Being enumerated in the same township (or enumeration district) in a census
or listed in the same taxing district means for certain that those people
lived (or paid taxes in) the same district. Adjacent names may be near
neighbors or they may not.

It’s always worth remembering what a record tells us explicitly and what it
suggests to us. There is a difference

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-- 
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Michael John Neill
Genealogy Tip of the Day
http://www.genealogytipoftheday.com
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