When the Census Makes No Sense

by Wanda Tucker~

Sometimes, as I do this work, tracking people across history, I am absolutely baffled by the range of errors that are found in the United States Census. After all, these are some of the earliest government documents we have, and one would hope that the people chosen to compile the information were some of the most educated and responsible people of their time. But it sure doesn’t seem that way sometimes.

Not long ago, I came across a man named John Wilts on a census in Wyoming in 1920. He was important to my search, because I was looking for a child named Jack who I thought might have been orphaned, and sure enough, the boy was living with John Wilts, not his parent, or any relation to them that I knew. This man’s name had not come up in any of my research on the family, so he made no sense as a guardian for this child. A mystery.

In the case of John Wilts and the orphan, I had to dig a bit deeper into the census to make sense of it. It is my habit, no matter what, to look at the all the names on the page of census with the person I am looking at, as well as the page before and the page after. I just scan for names that are familiar. In this instance, eureka! A couple of names away, I recognized the name of the child’s aunt with her family. Getting somewhere!

I had another census listing for them twenty years later in 1940, and Jack, by then twenty-five years old, not only lived with the family, but had changed his last name to theirs. John Wilts was not listed with them then, but I assumed he would have died by then, as he would have been eighty-one. I had looked at the 1930 census, and the boy did not live with the aunt and family then. He would have been fifteen, and in those times might have been on the road looking for work. It was the Great Depression, after all.

I thought for a while, and then did what I usually do; I looked again at all the information I already had. On the 1930 Census, the aunt’s family had a member that I had not been able to identify. His name was John Valte. He was listed as the father of the Head of Household, but he had a different last name, which was strange (I still haven’t figured that part out!).

Beginning with the 1890 Census the government began asking questions about immigration which can be helpful to researchers. One of these questions is “immigration year.” Another, asked on every census, is place of birth. By comparing this information to listings found in other places, such as New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957, found at Ancestry.com, we can sometimes get a bit further in our research.

Looking further at John Valte in 1930, I found that his immigration year was the same as the year John Wilts listed in 1920. The year of birth was the same. Place of birth was different; Yugoslavia and Austria. A bit of research revealed, however, that these place names could easily have been different because of political happenings of the time. I was able to find his immigration record at Ancestry, where he was listed as Johann Valte of Austria. Jack’s family was also Yugoslavian/Austrian. This information, along with his proximity to the family and his fostering of Jack in 1920, were enough to convince me that they were the same man with different names!

So I was able to conclude this part of my research. Jack was orphaned sometime before 1920, and lived with John Wilts. John Wiltz was really John/Johann Valte, who lived with Jack’s aunt and uncle in 1930.

Just how he is related to the family is another mystery for another day.