re PRWR: I am surprised Martin Kleiner and Stan
Goodman did not refer to my reply earlier this week on
the letters PRWR on US census forms, where I suggested
following the discussion in http://tinyurl.com/csv3o

and where a possible and perhaps more plausible
solution is proposed: PR...ussian W...estphalia
R..hineland.

This is a well-defined, historic area of Germany and
appears on the best-known search engine if you enter
keywords such as Prussia{n}, Rhine/Rhineland and
Westphalia in various combinations.

No enumerator could/would write out these 27 letters
in full - an agreed acronym was the obvious answer.

Has anyone ever seen the words written out in full on
a census form? Or alternatively, is there anyone out
there whose ancestors definitely came >from this region
and who has seen the letters PRWR on their census
listings?

We know that *Austria* was used on U.S. census forms
for the wider Habsburg Empire including Galicia,
Transcarpathian Ruthenia and Bosnia Herzegovina -
imagine writing those out!. Again *Austria* is a
shorthand version of a much longer letter sequence.

I would be interested to hear if there are any other
*shorthand locations* found on these census forms.

Celia Male [U.K.]