Posted by Stephen:

I honestly don’t know how many times I have found myself looking up a possible census hit only to realize that the person lived next door to relatives I had already found.

Apparently, or at least in my family, we either keep our relatives nearby or we marry the neighbors.

For example, I tracked my great-great-great grandmother in the 1870 East Baton Rouge, Louisiana census. Her maiden name was Mary Jane ROBERTSON, but in the drawl of Anglo-Louisiana (as it had come to me), her name was sometimes listed ROBERSON, ROBESON or even ROBINSON. I thought, (based on poor transcription), that her father was Isiah and her mother Catherine TITREVILLE (turned out to be TIDWELL), but had no idea about siblings or any other relatives. I knew she had married a COOK after the 1860 census. I found her in 1870 living with her daughter and a Lizzie ROBERSON (no ‘t’), probably a sister.

Having triumphantly added one new relative to my tree (like a Christmas ornament), I didn’t even bother to notice that two households up the census page was a David A. ROBERTSON. He would turn out to be my ggg-grandmother’s brother.

And it was a couple of years before I found out that her other sister, Sarah Ann, had married a Charles ROBERTS. When I checked the 1870 census, Sarah Ann and Charles ROBERTS were the household between David ROBERTSON and Mary Jane COOK. The fact that Sarah Ann had named her children traditional family names should have attracted my attention previously, but it didn’t.

I have learned my lesson, however. Now whenever I find relatives, or "people of interest" as I like to call them, I always take a careful look at the neighbors. I notice their names, ages, places of birth and occupations to see if there are clues or similarities to my family. Oftentimes I don’t always see anything meaningful, even when the neighbors later turn out to be relatives. But every once in a while, I come across a neighbor household that just fits. After looking further, I will discover a person who I had seen in a census, but because of the pervasive use of nicknames, or poor handwriting, was lost.