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| From Flickr, used as is. |
Sometime in 1810, perhaps in the later half of the year after the harvest was over, a census taker followed the winding country roads of Greenwich, New York, to provide an accurate list of all the inhabitants of the town, black or white, free or slave.
The census taker recorded two John Tanners in Greenwich, both men with families of about the same age.
Unfortunately neither entry matches our Tanner family genealogy. The most likely scenario is that the second John Tanner is ours, since he is listed close to his mother Thankful, but neither entry is a perfect match.
Here are the numbers. The first group is how the Tanner family should have looked in the census, based on the genealogy. The next group is a John Tanner family living with two free blacks. The third group is the John Tanner family living close to the widowed Thankful Tanner. Neither family has slaves; by 1810 there were only eight left in Greenwich.
Note that extra individuals in the family do not matter one way or the other since families were often more fluid than today due to early deaths. The more concerning data points would be the lack of small children who should have been at home with their mother.
FAMILY HISTORY
Males
Under 10 2-3 William (age 7-8), Sidney (age 1), possibly Elisha (age 9-10) unless he was living with the Bentlys
Under 16 0-1 possibly Elisha (age 9-10)
Under 26 0
Under 45 1 John Tanner (age 31-32)
Females
Under 10 1 Matilda (age 5-6)
Under 16 0
Under 26 0
Under 45 1 Lydia Tanner (age 26-27)
OPTION 1 (Page 4, bottom half, line 6)
Males
Under 10 2
Under 16 1
Under 26 0
Under 45 1
Females
Under 10 0
Under 16 0
Under 26 1
Under 45 1
Free blacks 2
Slaves 0
OPTION 2 (Page 5, top half, line 14)
Males
Under 10 1
Under 16 1
Under 26 0
Under 45 1
Females
Under 10 2
Under 16 0
Under 26 0
Under 45 1
Free blacks 0
Slaves 0
MUSINGS
The first entry works if Elisha was counted as 10, Matilda was put in the wrong age group, and the Tanners had two free blacks living with them. The second entry works if Elisha was counted as 10 years old and the census taker accidentally recorded one of the little boys as a girl.
Note that Thankful's entry is strange: she is listed in the under-45 category, but she was actually in her 50s. She also has four boys ages 10-26 living with her (Pardon, Francis, Joshua, and William) and one girl under 10 (perhaps a granddaughter; could this be Matilda?).
Another option is that John Tanner was living elsewhere, but this is not supported by the family history or by any online indexed copy of the US Census. If anyone wanted to read through the entire Washington County Census to check for a wrongly-indexed entry, the easiest way would be to read the copy at archive.org:
Washington County Census
Washington County starts on page 291 and goes through 379. Greenwich is at the very end, and the concluding page of the census (381) notes that it was filed on February 7, 1811.
Another avenue of investigation would be to figure out the identity of the other John Tanner and decide out if he is an obvious match for one of the census records.
CONCLUSION
This is a case where we do not have enough data to make a final decision, but since John was shown farming his father's land in the tax records, it's likely that he was located close to his mother, if we can assume that the census was geographical in nature.
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My husband suggested that since there are occasionally duplicates in the census — he saw one the other day — it's possible that both these entries belong to John Tanner. There were 2,752 people in the town, so how likely would it be that the census taker would have made a duplicate entry for someone?
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