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1950 Census Head of Household listed is wrong

Lisa Crisp

When looking at the 1950 census for my grandparents it list my Grandpa, Grandma, their 2 children and THEN it list a head of household which is a different person, not related. The actual head of household is actually my Great Grandparents whose names are the 2 ABOVE my Grandpas.

The person who is listed as my grandparents HOH is the last person on the page and his family is listed on the next page. The machine just picked the wrong HOH because the person taking the information wrote the names in the wrong place.

Do I just leave it as is, copy the documents and make my records right or is there a way to change HOH to the correct people?

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    Dear Lisa Crisp,

    Thank you for posting your request on History Hub!

    Census enumerators wrote down the information that was given to them to the best of their ability and education level. What did the respondent say? What did the census taker hear? The census taker may have misunderstood what was said. Errors in census records are common – going all the way back to the first census in 1790. Another fact to consider is that if multiple families lived together in the same dwelling, only one person was designated as the head of household, even if he is not the head of the other families in the household.

    After the file is transferred to the legal custody of the National Archives, we may not add to, subtract from, or change in any way the contents of official records of the U.S. Government.

    The Official 1950 Census Website has an option to provide corrected transcriptions of names which will appear in search results (without changing the original record). For more information see 1950 Census:  Please Help NARA Refine the Draft Name Index! However, there are no options for submitting revised information for other fields.

    In regards to the indexing done on other websites such as Ancestry, please contact those websites directly to inquire about their options for user submitted content.

    We hope this is helpful.