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Classification: Query
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Message Board Post:
I've wondered about the Mansfield Crow and the Mary Mansfield, Jami, and I really
don't know. I thought Mansfield Crow would be a unique name, but there is one or more
in almost every census, and probably more because of different possible spellings, such as
Crowe. There's a Mansfield Crow in Baltimore MD before 1800; I wonder if the
Mansfield weren't an early Crow wife's maiden name and a son was named Mansfield
Crow for his mother and the name had been handed down thru the years. there are Mansfield
families living in Greene co IN where they married. It is possible, I believe, that they
could have been cousins, maybe distant, but cousins. Neither of these families, Crow or
Edington, I just got caught up in it when I found Mansfield Crow as the man who'd
killed my gr-gr-uncle in 1858. In trying to locate information on the internet on the
murder my searches turned up the marriages and children so I traced the families to some
degree.
There are some dates in all of this that don't quite jive, but I gave up on expecting
things to always look perfect about 25 years ago in my research. census records are
notoriously incorrect on dates and names -- apparently people used different names or
maybe nicknames -- sometimes they'd be listed in the census by the first name, the
next census would be a different name, maybe their middle name, only the age would give an
indication it was the same child. Birth dates bounce all over the place. Census data is
only as good as the knowledge and memory of the person who answered the door when the
census taker knocked -- might be a child, a neighbor if the family weren't home, maybe
a husband/father who typically are not good about ages of their children, maybe not even
rememering the child's real name if they used a nickname or their middle name.
It's all a huge puzzle and we keep trying pieces until they fit and start to make a
picture that makes sense. With the intern!
et and email, we can all work on this puzzle together.