Craziest Census Transcription Error Ever!

 A Census Transciber Makes A Ridiculous Mistake

Lola Conway Trosdahl: 1891-1947

Wife of First Cousin Once Removed Nels Trosdahl

 

I had to laugh when I looked at the 1940 Census record for Lola Conway Trosdahl, the wife of my first cousin once removed Nels Trosdahl. Whoever transcribed that census page for Ancestry either had extremely poor eyesight, or was trying to be amusing. In 1940, Lola was a fifty-year-old woman living separately from her husband. She was a lodger in the home of a man named John Baldwin, who was a laborer on road construction projects, so not a wealthy man by any means.

According to the transcription, Lola was employed as a “carpenter” for “Two Grand Underwear”. I was agog. A fifty-year-old female carpenter in northern Minnesota in 1940? It seemed unlikely. And what in the world was “Two Grand Underwear”? Some bizarre underwear manufacturing company? Why did they need a female carpenter?

I pulled up the actual image of the census record. The census taker’s penmanship was neat and quite legible, and Lola’s entry did not include any of the information provided in the transcription.

So what was Lola’s occupation? She was an unpaid “caretaker”—other than the words “caretaker” and “carpenter” both starting with “car-“ and ending with “-er”, they are quite distinct visually, so I can’t explain the transcription error. And Lola’s workplace had nothing to do with underwear. The census taker quite clearly wrote the words “two grandchildren”.

The household included two of John Baldwin’s grandchildren, both toddlers. Lola was their caretaker—today we’d probably say she was their nanny.

I would think that transcriptionists have editors. How did this egregiously ridiculous mistake slip past? Lola probably would have preferred doing carpentry work for Two Grand Underwear—it was bound to have paid better than the room and board she was receiving from the Baldwin family.

Lola’s life provided one other interesting and tragic piece of information. She married her husband, Nels Alfred Trosdahl on December 29, 1905. Since she was born in July 1891,that means she was a 14 year old bride. Nels Trosdahl was 22. Lola gave birth to their first child, Myrtle, barely five months later in May 1906, so she was nearly four months pregnant at the time of the marriage. Nels is fortunate that 1905 was a kinder time for pedophiles—Lola was a child! He was eight years older and an adult—he took advantage of her. What a sad, miserable life she must have led—Nels was a poor provider who worked as a farm laborer on other people’s land. Lord knows how they managed to support five daughters.

Lola died in 1947 at age 55. She was probably just worn out from a lifetime of labor and stress.