Use the Neighbors to Find a Missing Family in the Census.
If you are going to search a census year for a specific place and time, what matters is the readability of the images, the handwriting is the same across all venues but the lighting and focus of the images change between Ancestry, Familysearch and Heritage Quest. If you rely on only one of the venues for indexing, then the differences become even more important. The odds that all three skipped the same family or person are pretty slim.
In Ancestry‘s index, William Henry shows up in Dist. 23 of Greene Co., Tennessee in the 1860 federal agriculture census schedule, but not in the index for the population schedule. Lazereth Crouch is listed next to him in 1860 agriculture schedule.
William Henry and Lazereth Crouch of Greene Co., Tennessee
Lazereth Crouch, obviously a less common name than William Henry, is a good place to start, even though Lazereth might actually be Lazarus. The non-population census schedules are connected to, and the order and names taken from, the population schedules. A likely scenario, in 1860 the enumerator is at the house/farm of Lazarus Crouch, writes down the population information under the Lazereth Crouch family 1453 in the population census ledger page 453/212. The enumerator finds out the family owns slaves and runs the farm and so should be questioned on both the slave and agricultural schedules. He copies the name Lazereth Crouch from one ledger to the next and starts on the next set of questions. If Lazereth is in one of the later schedules he should be in the first, so if you find Lazareth you will find William.
The name Lazereth Crouch doesn’t pick up anything in the 1860 but Laz* Cro* does. The general standard spelling of Lazereth is Lazarus so I used the asterick * wild card.
If the neighbor method doesn’t work, the next choice could be reading through Dist. 23 page by page, it is only 12 pages long. In this case that won’t work, because part of the families enumerated on the farm schedule page are in Dist. 23 and part of them are not. The last three farmers in Dist 23, John Carter – family 1427, George Ridenhour – family 1428 and Enoch Moore – family 1429 are on lines 17, 18 , and 19 of the farm schedule. William Henry is on line 32 and Lazareth Crouch is on line 33. The next logical district, Dist. 24 is not a match as those families begin at family number 680. A map with the districts, shows District 23 adjacent to District 7, which is in fact where both William Henry and Lazareth Crouch appear.
If you don’t want to take the time to do a neighbor search, check each 1860 census available indexed by FamilySearch and Heritage Quest through many local public libraries. I keep all three on my favorites or bookmarks. Enumerators were paid by the household or by the person counted. It made an economic difference to them if they listed everyone possible. Not as many people were missed as is commonly batted about. Use the neighbor search, the page by page review or the alternate indexed venue to search and find a missing family.
