I hearby curse all census enumerators who only used initials

[Rosie1223]

instead of writting out the full first name!!!

Particularly Mr W N McKnight (can't even write out your own name, huh?) of 1860 Dyer County Tennessee!!

[kdmorris]

1. Hear hear!!!

I'm sure it was a thankless job, but dang, they could TRY, you know?

[Cybergata]

2. Maybe Mr. W. N. McKnight couldn't read!

But then he shouldn't have been employed taking a census if that was true.

There was a census taker for Valencia county in New Mexico (which at the time was close to half the state at time) who started out just putting initials for the 1850 US census. Before the 1850 US census in New Mexico, all Spanish and Mexican censuses for New Mexico have everyone's name, including the woman's surname at birth. Luckily there was a Mexican census taken in 1845 for the area I was researching.

[fudge stripe cookays]

3. Let me add those...

whose penmanship left a lot to be desired! I have a couple of pages that are absolutely unreadable.

Fortunately, most of our census takers in Wisconsin did a more thorough job of it and usually used full names. But I did have Isaac Baldwin appear as "J.B" one year, which made him REALLY hard to find! Wide open searches are your friend...