I’ve thought quite a bit about how the elusive Benjamin Butler would appear in the 1860 census. So much that I decided to create a possible 1860 census enumeration for Benjamin as if I were the census enumerator. It is a valuable exercise in many ways:

• It is about thinking who would be in your ancestor’s household.
• It is thinking about how they would have said their names.
• It is about how old they would have said they were and where they would have said they were born.
• It is thinking about where your ancestor would have lived at the time of that enumeration.

It’s not something I do very often, but for a family who is difficult to locate in a census, constructing a probable enumeration for that family may provide some insight into locating their actual entry.