I just got home from spending a few hours at my nearest library that has a
wonderful census collection. I was looking for a family from KY that had
migrated to MO in the mid-1840's, and while I was there, I decided to look
for another family. According to the family bible, some of the family was
buried at Oak Forrest church near Bland in Gasconde Co MO. Periodically I
had looked for this family and had wondered why they weren't in the census
for that county. I had even posted queries a few times at Gasconde Co MO
USGenWeb site, with no results.
Last week I had requested an 1850 census lookup for the one known person who
had died in MO in 1867. Having noticed on the map that Bland was very close
to the Gasconde Co border, I requested help from a volunteer in neighboring
Maries Co. What luck! The person I was looking for was in the 1850 Maries
Co census with 2 of her sons. Undoubtedly they lived in one county and
attended church in the next county, probably not more than a couple of miles
away.
Rather than bother the volunteer in Maries Co for other lookups, I decided to
pull the 1850 MO Index at the library, and was puzzled that my person wasn't
there, but I didn't think too much about it because people get missed
occasionally in the indexes. So I pulled the census and went through it page
by page looking for my person and hoping to find other children in the area.
Weeeeelllllll,,,,,,,,the entire county had not been indexed!!!!!! Upon
further research, the compilers of the index stated that Maries County was
formed in 1855, the Website says 1855, but undoubtedly the census taker
didn't know that because an 1850 census exists!!!!. I found 4 families in
Maries,,,,so maybe since the county didn't exist, they still don't? :)
The lesson I learned: Take nothing for granted, even from the experts.
Sharon Tabor