How complete is 1860 census?

[Susan Moeur]

I am trying to track a relative who is listed in the 1850 census in
Boone Co., MO. Among his neighbors are siblings, parents, cousins.
By 1860 the extended family is dispersed to 3-4 neighboring
counties, and I can find everybody except my guy. I am confident he
remained in the area past 1860. He does not appear anywhere in the
ancestry.com index and I have browsed the census pages in the
communities of his relatives to no avail. So a few questions: what
percentage of people might have been missed by the 1860 census
takers? On the chance he was no longer in the area, what percentage
of people are omitted in ancestry.com's index? Any clues on how to
proceed?

[Richard R. Johnson]

On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 20:12:07 -0700, Susan Moeur <[email protected]> wrote:

I am trying to track a relative who is listed in the 1850 census in
Boone Co., MO. Among his neighbors are siblings, parents, cousins.
By 1860 the extended family is dispersed to 3-4 neighboring
counties, and I can find everybody except my guy. I am confident he
remained in the area past 1860. He does not appear anywhere in the
ancestry.com index and I have browsed the census pages in the
communities of his relatives to no avail. So a few questions: what
percentage of people might have been missed by the 1860 census
takers? On the chance he was no longer in the area, what percentage
of people are omitted in ancestry.com's index? Any clues on how to
proceed?

I've had difficulty finding people in this Census too. Part of the
reason may be that Ancestry uses AIS (Accelerated Index Systems) indexes
for the 1790-1870 Censuses. These indexes were prepared in the 1990's by
untrained researchers, were not subjected to editing or review and have
an overall error rate of 19%.

See http://www.kinsella.org/genealogy/research/ldsais.htm

RRJ

[Susan Moeur]

Richard R. Johnson wrote:

I've had difficulty finding people in this Census too. Part of the
reason may be that Ancestry uses AIS (Accelerated Index Systems) indexes
for the 1790-1870 Censuses. These indexes were prepared in the 1990's by
untrained researchers, were not subjected to editing or review and have
an overall error rate of 19%.

See http://www.kinsella.org/genealogy/research/ldsais.htm

RRJ

Thank you for that link - a handy bit of trivia to know.