Gold star for my cousin Daniel, who made an exciting discovery when studying the 1940 census page showing our great-grandparents and fam in Carter County, Tennessee (click on the images for larger versions):
The Hayeses in the 1940 census (image from Ancestry.com).
Nothing too unusual in the crop above — the census page lists my great-grandparents William E. and Della (Crow) Hayes, along with their children including my grandma, G. Alma.
Actually, one discovery does reveal itself in the information listed above — I never knew that my great aunt Ruth was born in Colorado until I saw this page — this was confirmed by relatives at a recent family gathering. There will be another blog post on that story later.
BUT, the really super-huge-big-deal discovery was made by Daniel at the top of the page. Check out the name of the enumerator:
Enumerator: Alma Hayes (image from Ancestry.com).
The enumerator was Alma Hayes a.k.a. Grandma! You think I would have recognized the handwriting. Kudos, cousin Daniel!
What’s interesting is that, for privacy reasons, enumerators were not supposed to work their own areas. It looks like they may not have had many enumerators to choose from in this location, thus the situation you see.
I was wondering about that, Joel! Interesting!