1885 State Census of Iowa, Madison County TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES by Transcriber Kent G. Transier for the IAGenWeb State Census Project http://iagenweb.org/census/ Copyright (c) 2004 by Kent G. Transier ============================================================================ Transcriber's Notes - Missing Townships and Other Issues Missing Townships - The following townships are missing from this transcription: Crawford, Douglas, Madison (except for the town of Earlham), and Ohio. The Iowa Historical Library, keeper of the original documents, has confirmed that these townships are missing from the bound book of 1885 Madison County and has no explanation for their absence. Since the bound book has consecutively numbered pages, it appears that the missing documents were never submitted to the state for binding and archiving. County of Birth - The Madison County 1885 census book had a tight binding. When the book was microfilmed, the tight binding had an adverse effect on the microfilming of the counties of birth. Many of them were not readable and when these were encountered during the transcribing process, "Iowa" was put in the state column. *UPDATE, June 2004* The transcriber has gained access to the original document and updated the missing county of birth data. Census Dates - There were no dates on the individual census pages. The instructions indicated that the census was to start in January. Most of the townships were signed off in April or May and it can be assumed that the bulk of the work was probably done in March and April when the weather was a little warmer and before the spring planting started. Missing First Names - Where initials were used in place of first names, the transcriber has added first names in the "Transcriber's Remarks" column where known. There are just a few of these in each Township except for Walnut Township where, contrary to the requirement to use full names, initials were used almost exclusively. Where first names have been added in the Transcriber's Remarks column, the primary sources have been federal census data and Madison County vital data such as marriages, births, and cemetery records. The user should be cautioned that these added first names should not be used as a reference but only as an aid to finding and verifying the names using records where they actually appear. Index - An enhanced index has been included with this transcript. The index contains an exact duplication of every name in the census. To better enable users to find their ancestors, corrected names have been added where the first and last names had been transposed by the enumerator, as well as corrections for gross misspellings and the use of initials.