School Days

One often-overlooked resource which is very helpful for Mississippi researchers is the censuses of educable children which are available for the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some of these are available online for Tallahatchie County researchers at http://www.rootsweb.com/~mstallah/education/index.html. Some have been published by local historical and genealogical societies to help their efforts. Examples of these are Tate County at http://www.rootsweb.com/~mstate/gensoc.html and Tishomingo County at http://www.rootsweb.com/~mstchgs/ (click on publications). Itawamba Historical Society has published these lists in various issues of Itawamba Settlers over the years. This publication is indexed in PERSI. This database is available to many library patrons and society members. One researcher offers to do lookups in the lists for Lawrence and Lincoln Counties at http://www.rootsweb.com/~msquery/. A very good description of the Oktibbeha County lists is available at http://www.sturgisms.homestead.com/educable.html. In the lists I've seen, the head of the household is listed and each child of school age is listed along with her or her age. If you go to http://www.familysearch.org and choose to search the catalog, you can do a keyword on the term "educable" and come up with the various ones which are available at the Family History Library and in Family History Centers across the country.