[American Quilter]

I just came upon the One Word Tree last night, and am still not too sure what it is, but it did provide me with a great-grandmother's maiden name, as well as that of two of her children I hadn't been able to identify. I do understand what you mean about being careful, so I was pleased to find the info supported by census records once I knew what to look for.

One thing that's entertained me as I've looked at census records covering decades is three great-aunts who only aged about 8 years each decade.

[Eva]

Old census records can be very entertaining. I was looking at some old records of my grandmother’s family in central PA and I noticed a couple of very strange occupations listed. I assume that what happened was that everyone in the area were subsistence farmers, but most also had a trade or some other job that they did, like being a blacksmith or a logger. Well, it seems that couple of them didn’t have anything else to report and when pressed by the census taker, one claimed to be a kite maker and another a card reader, or fortune teller.

[DJ MacWoW]

I love the name misspellings. Some of my family had German accents. Then there were census takers that were barely literate. Naomi became Maone. Um.....ok. LOL

But some of the handwriting on the census' is beautiful. They learned to write back when school taught penmanship.

Another source is Rootsweb. They are linked with ancestry and they have trees. They are no longer posting trees but the left old ones up. They also have forums.