I thought readers might enjoy this paragraph written by census enumerator Mary Ames Atkins at the end of the 1880 Salem, Massachusetts census, Enumeration District 240:
“A thorough, patient, faithful canvass, which I have prosecuted in spite of dogs, an ignorant post-master, pitiful penny-a-liners (livers?), “bad whiskey,” a too sadly frequent assurance that my employer was “a meddlesome fool,” and long journeys, often with no one to enumerate for great distances.”
Nancy Haugh
Previously published in RootsWeb Review:
3 January 2007, Vol. 10, No. 1
