Doodling during tedious or exhaustive processes is not new. But discovering the 150-year-old pencil sketches in official government documents was curious.
Research analyst Erika Woehlk found the line drawings of men in 1840s-style suits on the front and back of hand-written census transcriptions held by the Missouri State Archive.
That was a neat "treasure" of Missouri history.
An even more impressive finding, Woehlk said, was that the state of Missouri kept its own census every four years in the 19th century - meaning the archive holds two census for 1840 - one from the state, with the conspicuous doodles, and the federal government.
Woehlk's discoveries will be posted later this summer on The Great Missouri Treasure Hunt's Facebook page.