Fred and Elizabeth

Yesterday I realized that I did not have the 1910 Census information for Fred and Elizabeth. So last night, I tried searching for them again. I start my search the way I always do, spelling Elsner correctly, and when that doesn't bring up the results I'm looking for, I usually try to think of ways that Elsner might be misread when trying to decipher handwriting and search for those names. (Once I found it spelled "Ebner"!) I use the soundex sometimes, but it usually has way too many results. But last night I tried something I just learned about called a wild card. A wild card is a * or ? used in place of one or more letters. So I did different combinations of that such as "E?ner" and "E?er". And it worked! I found them! A lot of different names came up, but the one that caught my eye was for a Fred Elmer and his sister Elizabeth I. I didn't expect to find them together, but this looked promising so I opened it up to take a look. It turned out to be them! 

You can see how it does look like "Elmer".  Elizabeth's middle initial should be 'N' but everything else looks right.  The ages for both of them and the place of birth and where the parents were born are all correct. 

As you can see, the 1910 census for Elizabeth shows her place of birth as Indiana and a few days ago, I showed you that the 1900 census has her place of birth as Illinois. Elizabeth was born in Indiana. I know this because of her birth records. Sometimes, some of the information on these old records is incorrect, but you have to look at the rest of the information and add it to what you already know, and if it makes sense, then you know you are looking at the right thing. 

So in 1910 Fred and Elizabeth were both single and renting a place in Princeton Township, MN. Fred was working as a salesman in a hardware store and Elizabeth was working as a saleslady in a general store.