1850 Census for Malitda Gibbs

The letter that Charlotte wrote with family history has been like finding a buried treasure for me, I have started to "dissect" it hoping to learn more about this family.

Today I used the letter Charlotte wrote to try and find a young Joseph Lewis Gibbs in the census.I started with the 1850 census as it is the first census to list everybody in a household. In 1850 Joseph would be about 15 years old. Charlotte says that his mother, Nancy Donahue passed away in Feb of 1840, the 1840 census only lists the names of the head of a house hold with marks under age groups for both male and female, this is why I wanted to start with the 1850 census which lists each person in a household by name. I did locate Joseph in the 1860 census.

I haven't had any luck with Joseph so I decided to try Matilda Gibbs I was happily surprised when a Matilda Gibbs showed up in the results and even more so when I saw who she was living with. I found them in Deerfield Ohio Ross County. After I found them I went through each of the 32 pages of census records for Deerfield, I found a few more Donahue's that could or could not be related, Hannah's husbands name was Amos, he passed away in 1849, I found an Amos Donahue age 25 living close by.

The page I found Matilda on is located at Ancestery.com under U.S. census > 1850 United States Federal Census > Ohio > Ross > Deerfield image 22 line 14.