15 December 2014

How Many Samuel Jones Are in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania in 1820?

Searching for common names is bad enough, but when there are two individuals of them in the same in the same rural township it can be confusing.

According to the search results on Ancestry.com  when searching for Jones entries in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania in the 1820 census, there are two Samuel Jones in Newport, Luzerne County.

It seemed a little strange to me that they both had the same number of individuals in their household (7), but maybe that was just because 7 was Samuel Jones' lucky number.

When I went to view the image of each Samuel Jones I was taken to the same page as shown in the illustration that accompanies this post.

The arrow was not on the census image.

Why were there two index entries for Samuel Jones when they linked to the same page?

It took a little doing to figure that out and we'll have an update as soon as I can get the post written.

It's always advised to consult the actual document or image that was used to create an index entry. It certainly was necessary in this case.

Apparently the Jones family is common in Luzerne County, but not quite as common as the Ancestry.com index would have us to believe.

There's a reason why there's two index entries for Samuel. Stay tuned for an update--read it here.





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