Martin County, Indiana

Part of the USGenWeb Project

Townships: Towns Census Pages

Baker                          263-275

Brown                         277-290

Center                        291-305

Columbia                    307-317

Halbert                        319-329

Shoals                         331-337

Lost River                    339-350

McCameron                 351-363

Mitchelltree                  365-377

Perry                            379-391

 Loogootee                   392-401

Rutherford                     402-414
 
 The data are arranged in alphabetic order by surname. They include:

1. Surname,
2. given name and initial, if any,
3. age,
4. place of birth,
5. township,
6. census page number [remember that each census ‘page’ actually consists of two pages of 40 names each].

1. It is clear from the spellings used by the enumerators that they were neither more nor less literate than those whom they were recording. NO ATTEMPT has been made to correct or otherwise modify spellings to bring them into line with modern expectations. The spellings are those of the census. It must be remembered that the spelling of names, especially given names, was not as standardized as at present. A spelling may represent that actually given to the enumerator, or it may represent what the enumerator thought he heard, or it may represent the enumerator’s best guess as to the spelling. Some of the enumerators still used the old form of ‘ss’ which looks very much like ‘ps’ or ‘fs’ when written, and one enumerator used the old form of ‘s’ when that letter terminates a word.
2. Spellings of names have evolved since 1870. Names such as "Sintha," "Joshuaway," "Elliner," "Manervy," or "Johnathan" are spelled differently today than they were then. Again, NO ATTEMPT has been made to interfere with the spellings in the archival record.
3. In a number of cases among the members of my own extended family in Martin County, the enumerator simply recorded the name incorrectly. This has nothing to do with evolution of spelling, as I know from other contemporary documentation that the person whose name was recorded incorrectly in the census used the correct spelling from an early age. Similar mistakes doubtless happened in other families. Examples abound: Riely is listed as a given name where evidently Riley was meant. Families living adjacent to one another have one group spelling their surname ‘Monday’ and another ‘Mondy.’ The name ‘Michael’ is consistently misspelled, etc. Once again, NO ATTEMPT has been made to interfere with the spellings in the archives.
4. There are a few cases in the record where the enumerator simply went off the deep end. For example, one record has ‘Kentucky’ entered in the ‘occupation’ field and ‘Indiana’ in the ‘place of birth’ field. Interchanges of first and last name also apparently occur: ‘William Robert’ – is this ‘Robert Williams’ or ‘William Roberts?’ Ink blots, attempts to write over entries, bad penmanship – all these things abound. Don’t assume that an entry is incorrectly transcribed just because it doesn’t make sense. An instance: ‘Jame’ as a given name. Is this ‘Jane’ with extra humps in the ‘n’ or is it what we would now write as ‘Jamie?’ There are a few cases in which the enumerator did not enter a given name.
5. Place of Birth. The abbreviations used for the states of the USA are the ones currently in use, e.g. ‘Indiana’ is IN, not IA. Certain assumptions have been made, e.g. ‘Masouria’ was taken to be Missouri. Foreign POB entries offer some problems. Respondents, particularly from Germany, sometimes gave the "Land" e.g. Baden, rather than the country. In most cases it is clear what is meant, but in a few cases I have added a curt comment.
6. A final comment on the entries – if you, as researcher, believe a record to have been transcribed incorrectly, the writer will make an attempt to provide an image of the individual record so that you can decide for yourself how it should read. Please! No flames! I did the best I could on a very tedious task. There is no additional warranty of any sort implied for the Index.

Originally I undertook this project on a volunteer basis for the Indiana Genealogical Society, of which I am a member. The instructions of the Indiana Genealogical Society for recording the index were to list only the children 18 years or older for the head of household, but to list all the children for other parents in the household.

Unfortunately, the archives are not clear on this point. Heads of households were supposed to be given separate numbers from dwellings, but some enumerators recorded only one head of household per dwelling, regardless of the number of adults [and families] in the dwelling, and others recorded several households [and therefore heads of household] in those dwellings which contained several families. Enumerators usually entered the children in inverse chronological order of age, but this is often not the case. In some cases the male children apparently were listed first, and in some cases there is no particular order to the ages. In a sequence of ages such as [for example] 35 35 15 13 11 it is fairly obvious that the children are the latter three and their parents probably the first two. But in a sequence such as 35 11 13 18 7 3 the three-year old child might be the child of the 18 year old, or the enumerator may simply have been told the ages and names of the children ad lib by the person interviewed.

Consider the single example of the occupants of Dwelling 85, p. 370b, Mitcheltree Twp.:

Surname     Given     Age     POB

Baker            Jessee K         52             KY

Baker             Easter            50             KY

Baker             David              23            IN

Baker             Sarah             15             IN

Baker             Alice              12             IN

Baker             Emma            10             IN

Baker             Bartemus        17             IN

Baker             Niclos S          27             IN

Baker             Ludica             24             IN

Baker             Ottaway             3             IN

Baker             Alexander         21             IN

Baker             Tillman H         19             IN

These are listed in the order in which the enumerator entered them on his pages. Jessee K Baker is indicated as the only ‘Head of Household’ in the dwelling. Since the record does not indicate relationships, no decision other than conjectural can be reached on the relationships connecting these people, and therefore no basis exists for implementing the instructions of the IGS. Very many cases of this type of ambiguity occur in the records.

Because of these problems, I abandoned the format suggested by the IGS and recorded all names in the archive. It is important to emphasize that this index is not a product of the IGS. The records transcribed are taken from high-resolution computer images of the microfilms of the original census pages.

I hope this index will prove useful for those trying to trace their families in Martin County. This index exists in both printed and magnetic form. Permission to use a magnetic copy of this index is hereby given to the Manager of the Martin County, Indiana Web Site. Several other copies have been provided gratis to libraries in the area. Softbound copies of the index are available at cost from:

Dr. John L. Ragle

12 Cold Spring Lane

Hadley, MA 01035

to whom further inquiries should be directed.

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