. (Please direct research
questions to the lookup
volunteers, or to the Pulaski County query board)
A note about spelling variations/errors:
First of all, some letters look identical to others. For example: "I" & "J" are almost always identical in the old style of writing; final "-n" & "-w" are often identical, making it impossible to distinguish Barrow from Barron; in some years "B" & "R" are used interchangeably, as are "H" & "K"; "r" can easily be mistaken for "s", as they are very similar; & in some years, especially 1856-1858, many "a"s look like "o"s (which makes Jas. [James] look identical to Jos. [Joseph]).
Another consideration is that these records were first gathered by the tax assessor (who probably wrote it as he heard it, which creates spelling variations based on the way the name *sounds*), & then the record was copied by the County Clerk. If the Clerk misread the entry, then this would cause your ancestor to be listed under another name. Any *suspicious* looking entries (that I have found) are crossed indexed. This is not done claiming they are the same person, but rather to make you aware that a potential descrepancy exists.
A note about dates:
Many of the records HAVE NO DATE. They are, however, grouped by year. I
wonder if the year was actually the calender year or, as is the case of census
records, from the middle of the year [If you found your ancestor on the 1850
mortality schedule, he would have died within the census year, which means
between 1 Jun 1849 & 31 May 1850]. Take a look at the Clerk's statements
& see what you think (a transcription of the Clerk's statement can be found
at the top of each page -- but only for the years in which a statement was
made). There are some entries recorded more than once (& not always in the
same year!!). There are many instances where a child's birth record & age at
death just don't add up (is this because it is recorded in the wrong year? Did
the year start in the summer? Was the age "11" really meant to be '11 months'?
Were ALL of those people at the bottom of p 3 of the 1857 deaths REALLY days old
when they died... or are the ditto marks an error?)