Georgia Ella Powell and Census Issues (resolved)

My great grandmother Georgia Ella Powell (Nannie) married John Adam Zaun (Poppoo) in 1903.  She had five children: Pauline, Bill, Ernie (my grandfather), Jimmy, and Agnes.

Georgia Ella Powell > Ernest Earl Zaun > John B. Zaun > Teresa Zaun Austin

I have vivid memories of my great grandparents and great aunts and uncles in Richmond. My father was deeply attached to his relatives in Richmond and we would make at least one or two trips a year to visit family.  I knew my second and third cousins as well as most people know their first cousins!  But there were no children our age around when we visited Nannie.  While the adults sat and talked in the stuffy little house on Penick Road, my sister and I would wander around outside looking at the fish pond and all the cement animals in the yard (chickens, squirrels, frogs, etc.), or  we would run up and down the white board fence with the playful palimino pony across the road.  In the house, there were a few old toys - an ancient iron canon that was my father's childhood toy, a grotesque grinning rubber frog, and a beautiful cloth doll that became a black mammy when her skirt was flipped upside down.  Not much for children to do there, so we had to work hard to entertain ourselves.  I don't remember eating or drinking anything while we were there either - I can't imagine children of today enduring such a visit!

Visit with Nannie at Aggie's house, December 1964

[Click Here] to read a previous post and view photos of the house on Penick Road.

I am so thankful that even as a child, I had the presence of mind to talk with Nannie about her family, and to get information for our family tree.  I remember her lying in bed with tears streaming down her face because she could not recall a brother's birthday, or the name of a sibling who died shortly after birth.  I wrote all of her information on a cardboard family tree which I still have.

In researching the Zaun family on Ancestry, it is easy to confirm the name and dates of people because I knew them personally. However, a curious detail has come from my research.  In the 1930 census, it says that Georgia was born in Iowa.  IOWA?  I can find no documentation of her parents ever living in Iowa. Furthermore, the 1930 census is inconsistent, showing Iowa as the birthplace of Georgia on her record and on Pauline's, but shows her birthplace as Virginia in the records of her other children, Ernie, Bill, Jimmy, and Agnes.

1930 Census:  John A. Zaun, Georgia E., Pauline, John A. Jr., Agnes, Jefferson M. Powell; boarder, Johnson Campbell.
Above, see: Earnest Zaun (my grandfather), Jacqueline, and John B., age  3 mos.

The 1920 census consistently names Iowa as her birthplace in all the individual records for her and her children:

1920 Census:  Adam J. Zaun (he was called Adam), Georgia E., Pauline W., William J., Ernest E., John A. Jr., Georgia A. (Agnes) 

Could two different census takers 10 years apart be wrong?  The 1930 census information could be dismissed because of inconsistencies, but the 1920 census is clear.  If the information is incorrect, why would both documents contain the same error?  But unless I find another kind of proof, I have to conclude both census documents are incorrect.  The 1940 census gives Virginia as her birthplace:

1940 Census:  John A. Zaun, Georgia, John A. Jr.

Evidence proves that her parents, Jefferson Monroe and Marie Louise Powell, lived in Richmond in 1880 and again in 1893, but I can find no record for Georgia's birth year, 1885.  It seems highly unlikely that Jefferson and Marie would go briefly to Iowa and have a child, then return to have their other children in Virginia... DRUM ROLL.... but they did!

UPDATE! July 11, 2015:  In Marie Louise Powell's obituary, which I just obtained from a cousin on Ancestry, it says that the Powells lived for a brief time in the Valley of Virginia and in the "Middle West!"
So an Iowa birthplace for Georgia Ella Powell now makes sense.