So I'm a little behind but I'll catch up. This weeks post is "In the Census" and my favorite census story is finding Pierre and Ezilda Mathieu in the 1880 census. Pierre and Ezlida had immigrated from Quebec and were native French speakers. Due to the fact that I knew their children were born in Sprague CT I knew where they should be in the 1880 census. Alas anytime I did a search on Ancestry or Familysearch nothing came up. Finally I decided to go old school and page through the 1880 census for New London County Connecticut. Using other facts I knew about the family (Pierre had a brother Joseph and their father was Michel). I came across a page which was promising. Sure enough everything matched up with what I knew about the family except the spelling of the names.
The french speakers vs and english census taker! This is the family, they owned the Union Shoe Store for many years. The Soundex function didn't work with such a far off spelling. It just shows that sometimes you have to go old school and do the work yourself.
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