1885 State Census of Iowa, Madison County
http://ftp.us-census.org/pub/usgenweb/census/ia/madison/1885/_notes.txt

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Transcriber's Notes - Missing Townships and Other Issues
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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 caused the county of birth information to be unreadable on about 250 lines of data.  
   To remedy this situation, the transcriber was granted permission to review the original document 
   at the Iowa Historical Library in Des Moines.  As a result, there are entries for county of birth 
   that the user will not be able to verify on the microfilm.

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. 

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This Census was transcribed by Kent G. Transier and proofread by Judy Wight Branson
Submitted to the USGenWeb Census Project http://www.us-census.org/
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