Finito!

The 1850 census for Lawrence County, Mississippi has been transcribed, and is awaiting a review by a friend before posting. The final post concerning the people in the census is left to John E. Reegan, the assistant deputy marshall who took the census. Any further posts, will pertain to stats concerning the census.

An interesting side note concerning John, is that he sloppily wrote his own last name down in the census listing, thereby confusing the transcribers for MyFamily into indexing him as Jno Keegan, instead of Reegan. John is enumerated with his mother? Martha, and his brother James.

The following is transcribed from the handwriting of John on the last page of the census, it confirms my analysis in an earlier post when I said that the listing at Ancestry.com had duplicate pages, since the total official county of pages by John was 88, not 92.

The State of Mississippi
Lawrence County
I John E Reegan Deputy Assistant Marshall appointed to take the United States Census for the year 1850 in the Subdivision comprising the whole County of Lawrence. Do hereby certify the foregoing and within schedule No 1 consisting of twenty two sheets or eighty eight pages to be a true and correct enumeration of the free inhabitants in the said County of Lawrence. Taken agreeable to the tenor of my Oath of Office and instructions to the best of my knowledge and belief.
Given under my hand and seal the 12 December 1850.
Sworn + subricated? before me the 12 Dec 1850
J. R Chambliss J.P.

Jno Reegan
Assistant Deputy Marshall

Berry R. Bridges

Anybody who does transcription work in the 1850 census, will be amazed at the age difference between husband and wife. Or maybe they won't. There are still marriages today where one spouse is more then 10 years older then the other. But during the 1850's this was very common. I found an interesting marriage in the 1850 census, which showcases the age difference.

Berry R. Bridges (listed as B. R. Bridges in the 1850 census) age 45, is listed with wife, Amanda, age 17. Now I'm positive they're married, and that Amanda isn't just listed with Berry as column 10 was x'd for both of them, indicating that they had been married within the past year. Which one got the best catch, is left up for the family historians to decide. Berry got a young wife, and Amanda got a rich husband. Berry was one of Lawrence County's richest residents during the 1850 census. By the 1860 census Amanda is living with three children, and has the wealth attributed to her. Obviously, Berry died during 1850-1860.

In the 1860 census, a new wrinkle appears... the actual age difference widens. While Amanda is listed as 17 in the 1850 census, she claims she is only 25 in the 1860 census. That would have made her 15-16 years of age in 1850, not 17 as was annotated.

On 3 December 1861, an Amanda A. Bridges is married to George B. Butler in Lawrence County, Mississippi (Ancestry Mississippi Marriage Database). Whether or not this is the same Amanda Bridges has not yet been ascertained.

Sign Language Among North American Indians

Judy has recently placed a new book online for Native Americans, titled: Sign Language Among North American Indians. This would be an interesting read for anyone interested in the early history of sign language!

Eastern Oregon Obituaries

An ongoing project of Judy's is the Eastern Oregon Obituary Database that we have built as a combined project at Access Genealogy and Oregon Genealogy and History. With the help of several kind volunteers, along with permission from the local paper, we have added an additional 1,000+ obituaries into the database this past couple of weeks. That brings the total to over 3400 obituaries, specific to Eastern Oregon Counties.

Duplicate Pages

I have found 4 duplicate pages in Ancestry's online version of the 1850 Lawrence County, Census images. This duplication is redundant in their online index, thereby duplicating the names of 168 Lawrence County, Mississippi residents. The affected pages are:

page 62 duplicated on 66
page 63 duplicated on 67
page 64 duplicated on 68
page 65 duplicated on 69

Pages 65 ends with household 470, while page 70 begins with household 470. There are no missing pages, only duplicated ones.

Short Update

I have been away with the family enjoying a vacation in Orlando over last week, hence the lack of updates. After lot's and lot's of riding roller coasters with my oldest child Kristin, I am back at home, and will get back to transcribing tomorrow.

I did get some transcribing done last week, and am now about 60% finished with the 1850 Lawrence County, Mississippi Census.