Census Success

Sometimes you just have to be patient! I had never been able to find my mother's family in the 1920 census. According to her, they moved to Portage County, Wisconsin from Chicago sometime during that year.

I had tried several spellings for Churas: Ch, Ci, Cz, etc. without success. During the 1920 census the  census takers were supposed to collect the information in January. It seemed possible that weather was an issue: the family might have left Chicago before the census taker arrived and settled in Portage County after the census taker had visited the farm. At least it seemed to me that snow storms might have interfered with collecting data in January.

The explanation was much simpler, however. The indexer misread the name as "Chuvas" instead of "Churas." This mistake meant the name would not turn up in the index when I tried different spellings for the beginning of the name.

How did I find it? FamilySearch did, not me. They were living on Throop Street in Chicago's Fourth Ward.