Where In The World Is Henry?

I have a relative that I really want to find information on. He is my great, great grandfather. I can find him in 1910 but for some reason he seems to have disappeared from every other census. What is that about?

I've mentioned the show "Who Do You Think You Are" before and as I was watching the show with Matthew Broderick he had a similar problem. He had a relative that was in the 1850 census and then his wife was in the 1870 census but neither was in the 1860 census. Where did they go? They found out the relative was in the Civil War during the 1860 census. Still why wouldn't the rest of the family be on that census?

I joked with my father that maybe someone came by the house to record the family but since the father wasn't there they just kept on going. I like to hope that isn't what happened. Maybe they were out visiting or it was Sunday and they were at church. Either way you would think that they would send someone back later to make sure everyone was counted.

Think about it this way. Every time I watch any television show these days I see at least five to six commercials about how important it is to send in the census. How is it so important now but back then you could just skip whole families? Does that mean that not everyone will be counted this time either?

All I know is that when you come across some one like ol' Henry here it makes you want to throw your notebook across the room and stomp away vowing never to search for anyoen again. It's a lie and we al know it as soon as we say it. Why? Because secretly we love the Henry's. They challenges that they repersent and when we finally find that information there is a vindication that comes with it. A sense of beeting the odds and learning something more. And it's that why we all started researching in the first place?