Methodology Monday with three census names for one person

You think the census is wrong? Way wrong? Read this article to get an idea of what you may need to do to prove it.

Midwesterners are the main fare in "Untangling Intertwined Branches: Caroline McNeill and Caroline Spencer in Lee County and Marion County, Iowa," by Marieta A. Grissom, CG, in the September 2009 National Genealogical Society Quarterly. She proves that 7-year-old Caroline McNeil in 1850, 12-year-old Issabelle Spencer in 1856, and 18-year-old Caroline Spencer in 1860, all in Warren and Nancy McNeil's household, are the same person...who was not a child of the McNeils. The journey involves censuses, vital records, probate records, and more in several counties and three states.

Cato Mead in Lee County, Iowa

Marian Pierre-Louis on the APG email list points to an article in the Daily Gate City (Keokuk, Iowa), about a Memorial Day observance involving Cato Mead, one of the few black Revolutionary War veterans buried west of the Mississippi. Originally from Norwich, Connecticut, he came to southeast Iowa in 1840 and lived there six years before his death at the age of 79.

(FYI, Keokuk is at the triple corner of Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois.)