Census Records

This section will first start documenting the indexed Claffey records, and then hypertext to those that have been transcribed. As with many projects, this is ongoing. I do not expect to finish it before the 1930 census records are available in the year 2002 (I think that's when they become available)

The 1880 Federal Census used a surname coding to index all heads of households and persons of different surnames in the household. This coding index, called Soundex, helped to group names which have similar sounding consonants. That way, if a census taker spelled a person's name "Thomas Cliffy" instead of "Thomas Claffey", it would still be grouped with the "Claffey" variant.

C410 is the Soundex code for Claffey, Claffy, Claffie, Claffee, as well as recording mistakes such as Cluffy, Cliffey, and Cloffey. Other names grouped in C410 that cause headaches (due to similarities in appearances when cursively written) during rapid microfilm scanning are Cluff, Cliffe, Calfee, Clabby, Clipp, Clapp, Celuffo, Coloff, Califf, Colby and Calaff, among others.

Each Soundex coded name ends up with one letter and three numbers.To Soundex a name, the first letter of the surname is not coded, and remains. The other letters are converted to a number after the letters a, e, i, o, u, y, w, and h are struck out.

Thus Claffey becomes Clff. The chart below is used to next convert Clff to C411.

Letters and conversion numbers

b, p, f, v converts to 1
c, s, k, g, j, q, x, z converts to 2
d, t converts to 3
l converts to 4
m, n converts to 5
r converts to 6

When two numbers follow each other, only one is used, so C411 becomes C41, and then a zero is tacked on to end up with the required three numbers. Thus C41 ends up as C410.

1920 Census