I am not familiar with US only UK censuses. However, in UK they record 
who was resident on the night of the census so if your guy was visiting 
mamma and papa or even working at night away he might he might easily be 
missing. Nick names and mis-spellings are common. Multiple source 
research  is the answer as intimated by Susan. As a historian as well as 
an archaeologist its nice to see some good source criticism by the 
respondents. So often what marks the good 'historian' from whatever 
discipline they started  is not just clever ideas but understanding the 
nature of the sources and if you do that they often tell you things you 
weren't expecting to find..

paul


On 24/05/2010 19:56, Carl Steen wrote:
>   I agree with Susan and Meli, which is why I tried casting a wider net. Someone came up with a Franklin E. Justice in Union County Ohio in the 1870 census, which I did not find in my nationwide search. Unfortunately I have marked pieces from 1868 and 1873, which suggests its a different guy...
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> Carl Steen
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>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Susan Walter<[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Mon, May 24, 2010 2:49 pm
> Subject: Re: Potters
>
>
> Meli's right, the transcribers do make mistakes, but so did the census takers.  And if your "informant" at the door giving the information is an uneducated foreign servant, or a child, for instance, the poor census taker often just phonetically did the best he/she could do.
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> There is another problem I have encountered here in San Diego County; the census never got to parts of it.  Our border region is very poorly documented.
>
> I have located names using land use maps, directories, newspaper accounts, school records, etc that never show up, in spite of their residence here for several decades.
>
> Good luck.
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Melissa Diamanti"<[log in to unmask]>
> To:<[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Monday, May 24, 2010 10:09 AM
> Subject: Re: Potters
>
> Ancestry.com is very useful, and I use it a lot. But the transcribers didn't always get the names right, so the entry won't come up in a search. In some cases, I ended up leaving through all the pages for my community and period, to find names that should have come up from a search but didn't. And sometimes they just aren't there, or turn up in a neighboring township instead.
> Good luck hunting.
> Meli Diamanti
>
> --- On Mon, 5/24/10, Carl Steen<[log in to unmask]>  wrote:
>
> From: Carl Steen<[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Potters
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Monday, May 24, 2010, 12:32 PM
>
> Hi all-
>
> Has anyone ever heard of a potter named F.E. Justice? He was in the Edgefield, SC area in 1870. I've tried searching the census via Ancestry.com, but the name never shows up.
>
> thanks
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> Carl Steen
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