Finding All of Grandma Henrietta's Children in the 1920 US Census

Happy 143d birthday, Grandma Henrietta Mahler Burk, born on May 9, 1881 in Latvia. 

In January of 1920, the US Census taker listed you, Grandma, with your husband and one of four children in a big apartment building in New York City. I found you there when I was cranking microfilm to look at this Census maybe 20 years ago, before digitization and indexing made it faster and easier to locate ancestors. Neither you nor Grandpa Isaac had been naturalized at the time, as indicated by the "al" status in the column at right. 

Look at surrounding Census pages

Creative spelling for these names, but recognizable as you and Grandpa and your older daughter at the bottom of a page. Wait, what? The other three children were not on the next page nor on the previous page!? Puzzling, but I was certain the rest of the family couldn't be very far away. Luckily, I had already learned to check a page or two back and a page or two forward, so I kept cranking the microfilm.

Whew, your two sons and younger daughter were two pages away, at the top of the sheet. Here they are, shown as son, daughter, son. Harold D Berk [sic] is my Dad, so I figured out very quickly who these people were and who they belonged to, even though they were NOT the children of the last person on the previous page.

What did the enumerator do?

Today, with 26 years of experience in genealogy research, I can understand why Grandma Henrietta was not enumerated with all of her children. Here's the story as I pieced it together.

That enumerator stopped work early on Sunday, the 4th of January, 1920, before counting all the households at 1642/1644 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. He finished the bottom of your page and left. You and your husband and older daughter were listed as "number of family in order of visitation #62." Remember that number 62, which is shown before the surname on the Census sheet.

On Monday, the 5th of January, the enumerator returned to the area but didn't start with your apartment or even your building, I can see by looking at the page after you. Then, two pages after you, I found your other three children finally enumerated on the 5th of January. It's a good thing I recognized the names. 

But the enumerator did leave an important clue: #62, number of family in order of visitation. With that number, he was linking Harold, Miriam, and Sidney to #62 family in order of visitation, the household of Henrietta & Isaac, which he had enumerated two pages before at this address. I just didn't have enough experience and knowledge decades ago to decode his Census entry indicating these three names were actually the children of the parents at family #62.

Thinking of you, Grandma Henrietta, on this anniversary of your birth.