1860 Hampshire County, Virginia, Census - Transcriber Notes Transcribed by Patti McDonald of West Virginia; proofread by Gary and Kay Chapman of Oregon. Please note: West Virginia was admitted to the Union June 20, 1863. Mineral County, West Virginia, was formed from Hampshire County in 1866. Transcription of hand-written census records is a rewarding but frustrating endeavor. While the images of this census were quite good, nothing can help when an ink spot or other smear obliterates the handwriting. Deciphering the writing of the census taker (enumerator) also is a concern. While the handwriting in this particular census is quite good, our best interpretation sometimes had to be used. For example, the letters T and L were quite similar. The old style double ess was used and sometimes looked like fs or ps. When in doubt, asterisks (*) have been used to indicate the unknown characters. In some instances, we have indicated an alternate possible interpretation in the remarks line. Our attempt to faithfully transcribe the census includes apparent misspellings. For instance, Piedmont was consistently spelled Peidmont. Pennsylvania was Pensylvania. When the enumerator finished a particular (Post Office) location, he never left the rest of the page blank as is common in other censuses we have seen. Neither did he indicate in marginal notes a point of transition. As a result, we don’t know between which dwellings the change of location occurred in the original census. We can be certain of location of a dwelling on a given page only if the location (i.e., P.O.) is the same on the previous page and the following page. An additional item to address is Column 12: “Attended School Within the Last Year.” In this census, the total number of “school children” in the dwelling was entered on the line for the head of household. On many pages, it appears an attempt was made later to indicate the children who probably were those in school. Software limitations precluded entry of the number from the census into column 12, so we have placed an X in that column and indicated the number in the remarks line. For example, when you see #12:4 in the remarks line, it means that four children from that dwelling attended school. Where indicated by the census taker, we also placed an X in the appropriate column for that child. The columns from this census include the following information: 1. Dwelling Number 2. Family Number 3. Name 4. Sex 5. Age 6. Color (white, black or mulatto) 7. Occupation 8. Real Estate Value 9. Personal Estate Value 10. Place of Birth 11. Married within last year 12. Attended school within last year 13. Over 20 and cannot read or write 14. Whether deaf and dumb, blind, insane, idiotic, pauper, or convict. (An “X” in this column indicates that the specific detail will be found in the remarks line.)