1885 State Census of Iowa, Madison County - TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

By Kent G. Transier for the IAGenWeb State Census Project
http://iagenweb.org/census/. Copyright (c) 2004 by Kent G. Transier

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Transcriber's Notes - Missing Townships and Other Issues


Missing Townships -
  The following townships are missing from this transcription:
    Crawford, Douglas, Madison (except for the town of Earlham) and Ohio.

  The Iowa Historical Library, keeper of the original documents, has
  confirmed that these townships are missing from the bound book of 1885
  Madison County and has no explanation for their absence.  Since the bound
  book has consecutively numbered pages, it appears that the missing
  documents were never submitted to the state for binding and archiving.

County of Birth -
  The Madison County 1885 census book had a tight binding.  When the book
  was microfilmed, the tight binding had an adverse effect on the microfilming
  of the counties of birth.  Many of them were not readable and when these
  were encountered during the transcribing process, "Iowa" was put in the
  state column.
  *UPDATE, June 2004* The transcriber has gained access to the original
  document and updated the missing county of birth data.

Census Dates -
  There were no dates on the individual census pages.  The instructions
  indicated that the census was to start in January.  Most of the townships
  were signed off in April or May and it can be assumed that the bulk of the
  work was probably done in March and April when the weather was a little
  warmer and before the spring planting started.

Missing First Names -
  Where initials were used in place of first names, the transcriber has
  added first names in the "Transcriber's Remarks" column where known.  There
  are just a few of these in each Township except for Walnut Township where,
  contrary to the requirement to use full names, initials were used almost
  exclusively.  Where first names have been added in the Transcriber's Remarks
  column, the primary sources have been federal census data and Madison County
  vital data such as marriages, births, and cemetery records.  The user should
  be cautioned that these added first names should not be used as a reference
  but only as an aid to finding and verifying the names using records where
  they actually appear.

Index -
  An enhanced index has been included with this transcript.  The index
  contains an exact duplication of every name in the census. To better enable
  users to find their ancestors, corrected names have been added where the
  first and last names had been transposed by the enumerator, as well as
  corrections for gross misspellings and the use of initials.