I'd like to add my endorsement of the LDS1880 census transcription. Within
minutes of receiving my set, I had located a gr-gr uncle who I had long
searched for (painfully reading through numerous reels of microfilm). He
was in a different county (in Nebraska) than I would have ever thought to
look. His record confirmed the birthplace of my gr gr gr grandfather (his
father) as PA--no surprise but nice to have the confirmation.
What makes this index so special in addition to having the entire country
in a single index, is that it is an every-person index, not just heads of
household. Unfortunately it doesn't help if someone hid from the census
taker or otherwise got missed. I had hoped to solve another long-standing
mystery, to find where the wife and children of a gr uncle, Henry Ritter
were in 1880. In that year Henry is in the household of my gr grandfather
(his brother), but there is no sign of his family. One daughter Priscilla
Ritter married in 1880 a few months after the census but she and her
sisters and her brother cannot be found in the census (her brother William
Ritter ended up in Grand Rapids, MI).
So I have a query. Does any one know what happened to Ira G. Mote and his
wife Priscilla Ritter after they married in Kosciusko in 29 Aug 1880? I
presumed they moved on since there is no Ira Mote in the 1900 Indiana
Soundex index. Or maybe they just made a habit of hiding from census takers.