Historical fiction book made me check the census records

Honestly, I was reading a novel set in 1910 Ohio and the author mentioned a family of six living in a two-room house. I pulled up the actual census page for that town and found three families in similar setups on the same street. Has anyone else fact-checked a book's setting and found the reality way more wild than the story?

1 comments

1 Comment

the_lucas1h ago

Another angle worth looking at is the opposite of what you found. Sometimes the census records are flat wrong. I found a 1905 record where a family listed five children, but the oldest was only four years old. The ages made no sense at all. Turns out the census taker just wrote down whatever the neighbor said because nobody was home. So a book can actually be more accurate than the real records. That makes historical fiction writers seem almost lucky they have to invent believable details instead of trusting the paperwork.