Hi Nancy- Thanks for the help. I'll check the Downes collection. I have looked at online property records (which are spotty in SC, at best), but haven't gotten to the physical records yet. The two pieces marked "F.E. Justice Maker" are tablet style grave markers.

Carl Steen
 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Nancy S.  Dickinson <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Mon, May 24, 2010 6:03 pm
Subject: Re: Potters


 
Hi all,
Perhaps checking into land records may be a way to go.   At least in NYC 
and CT, grantor/grantee records were indexed by WPA folks,  and the 
conveyances themselves have been microfilmed more  recently.
 
As for 1870 Fairfield County, whose countryside was  probably similar to 
the countryside during that time period in SC, one can  take a contemporary 
Beers atlas (with landowners' and tenants' surnames  included) and compare it 
with the 1870 federal census.  One can even  see exactly the direction down 
roads that the enumerator  traveled.
 
Carl, 
You have marked pieces.  Have you checked with the Downes  collection at 
Winterthur?  I remember going through an assemblage of  newspaper notices/ads. 
 I can't remember how they are organized, but I  believe once found in a 
finding aid, I was able to look at them on  microfilm.
 
What do the ceramics look like?
 
Best wishes,
Nancy Dickinson
 
In a message dated 5/24/2010 3:52:03 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
[log in to unmask] writes:

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...
>
>
>
> Carl  Steen
>
>
>
>
> -----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.
>
> 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
>
>
> Carl Steen
>
>
>