Hancock, MS 1850  Federal Census
Transcriber's Notes:

Paragraph written at the end of census (penciled page #156, stamped page #78B) 
-- very hard to read - uncertain transcribed words are followed by "[?]" 
-- insertions by me are in [ ]:

"The State of Mississippi  }
"Hancock County            } 
T. P. [? - definitely 2 capital letters followed by several spaces] Pierce [?] 
Deputy Assistant Marshal appointed to take the United States Census for the 
year 1850 in the subdivision comprising the whole of the county of Hancock 
do hereby certify the foregoing and within Schedule etc. - [?] containing 
[possibly here "Fifty nine" crossed out] 63 Pages to be a true and correct 
enumeration of the Free Inhabitants in the said County of Hancock taken 
agreeable [?] to the term [?] of my oath of Office and instructions to the 
best of my knowledge and belief
"Given [?] under my hand and seal [?] this 21st November 1850

[At left bottom:]
"Sworn to and subscribed before me an acting Justice of the Peace in and for 
the City of Jackson County of Hinds
"[signed by] J. H. Boyd [?], J.P.

[At right bottom, signed by:]
"S. B. Pierce
"Assistant Deputy Marshal"
[seal]

==end of census==

Notes by transcriber Kathryn Mutchler-Lee (katmon@earthlink.net):

My copy of this census was very hard to read, as evidenced by the large amount of 
uncertainties in my transcription.  Stamped pages 73A to the end were especially 
difficult. If I couldn't tell for sure what a word or number was, but had only 
one guess, I typed in the guess followed by "?".  If I had more than one guess, 
I put an * for each letter or digit that I could not decipher OR _?_ if I couldn't 
even tell how many letters were in the difficult part of a word or name.  I tried 
to put possible guesses in remarks.

"H. Co. Miss." appears frequently in the birth place column and most likely refers 
to Hancock County, Mississippi.  

Some households' children (always sets of 2) had brackets before their ages 
(the usual case), after their gender (one case), or both (once).  These sets of 
children were always the same age, and I think it was to signify that the 2 children 
were twins.  I indicated this in the remarks for each marked child.

I don't know what the P stands for in some individuals' real estate columns.  
It shouldn't represent Pauper, as there were some paupers in this census, and they 
were noted as such in the final column, not the real estate column.

There were a few places where the pages were out of order, going by household number, 
before they were page-numbered.  I kept them in order by page number, making notations 
that one needs to go to the end (or beginning) of another page, (naming the page), 
to get the remainder of a particular household.

Although only one enumerator was listed throughout the whole census, the handwriting 
changed.  Considering the handwriting changed from group of pages to group of pages, 
but sometimes *within* a household (if it spanned 2 pages), I think this suggests that 
the copy I worked from was a handwritten copy, not the original.  And more than one 
person evidently worked on copying it, evidenced by the change in handwriting style, 
not to mention the spelling of the word laborer (usually seen as "labourer"). 
Stamped pages 49A-70B & 77A-77B seem to be written by the same person; other pages 
were written by at least one other person.

Starting with household 418/428 (maybe a few households earlier), the dwelling/family 
numbers were overwritten, but I could only read what was written on top; hence, those 
are the numbers transcribed.

*****
Thanks to S-K Publications for providing the census page photocopies from which this 
transcription was made.  The complete original, handwritten census of this county is 
available in book form (including a typed index) from S-K Publications, PO Box 8173, 
Wichita KS  67208 (http://www.skpub.com/genie/census.html).
*****
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This Census was transcribed by Kathryn Mutchler-Lee <katmon@earthlink.net> 
and proofread by Francis Mutchler-Lee for the USGenWeb Census Project, 
http://www.us-census.org/
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