John Parsons, Jr., & the 1810 Census

Census Sunday
Brown-Sanford-Parsons
By Don Taylor

Following families in the early census records is always tricky. Sometimes, it becomes a rabbit hole without a successful resolution.

John Parsons lived in Sandisfield, Mass., during the 1790[i] and 1800 Censuses.[ii]  He then removed to Windham, Greene County, in 1802.[iii] John died in 1813, which means the only other Census he could be in is the 1810 Census.

Based upon my other research, John Parson’s household should have contained

Based upon that, I would expect

Males

• Under 10 Chester
• 10-16 John
• 16-25 Samuel, Orrin
• 25-45
• 45 & over John

Females

• Under 10 Permelia, Prudence
• 10-16
• 16-25 Polly
• 25-45 Mary
• 45 & over

So I would expect a Census to indicate a pattern of :

1 1 2 0 1 | 2 0 1 1 0 |

Census

1810 Census Serch

A search on Ancestry for John Parsons in Windham, Greene County, New York, failed to yield any results. Expanding the search to Greene County yielded one result, John Person. His Census pattern is:

0 1 0 1 1 | 0 0 1 0 1 | 4

Not the expected pattern for John. Additionally, John Person appears in the 1820 Census after my 5^th great-grandfather’s death.

My next thought is that John, Mary, and the kids live with someone else with the Parson’s surname. There were no entries for a Parsons head of household.

Finally, I browsed through the 1810 Census records for Windham,    Greene County, looking carefully at any covered over, smudged, written over, or otherwise illegible entries. Again, not success. John and Mary had only come to Green County in 1803 and may not have been enumerated properly

Conclusion

I don’t believe John Parsons was enumerated in Windham, Greene County, New York during the 1810 Census.

Endnotes:

[i] 1790 Census, 1790 Census – Page 34 – John Parsons, Jr. & John Parsons (Sr.) – Sandisfield Town, Berkshire County, Massachusetts. “Heads of Families – 1790 Census – Massachusetts – Page 34, Column 1, Persons 3 & 4. – Accessed 2 August 2020. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1907/dec/heads-of-families.html.

[ii] “United States Census, 1800,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XHRZ-J6J : accessed 31 March 2018), John Parsons Jr, Sandisfield, Berkshire, Massachusetts, United States; citing p. 175, NARA microfilm publication M32, (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), roll 13; FHL microfilm 205,611.

[iii] Chas. C. Chapman & Co. (2012). History of Washtenaw County, Michigan: Together with sketches of its cities, villages and townships, educational, religious, civil, military, and political history ; portraits of prominent persons, and biographies of representative citizens : history of Michigan : embracing accounts of the pre-historic races, aborigines, French, English and American conquests, and a general review of its civil, political and military history. Salem, MA: Higginson Book Company. – https://archive.org/details/cu31924028870520, Page 1371.