Hi Barbara! I've been very busy this week and just came across this thread. Looks like everyone has already helped you, but I did want to put in a few things I haven't really seen addressed.

The main thing I wanted to say is that searching ancestry census records tends to be different from other records. Census takers did not always ask how a name was spelled and they just spelled it the way it sounded to them, so "Ellison" with a southern drawl could easily sound like "Ellerson". When searching ancestry census, what I do is I search first by the exact surname, but if I can't find them, I do wildcard searches and just type the first 3 letters followed by * (ex: Ell* for Ellison). It's more tedious and you get more hits, but also a better chance of finding who you are looking for. You can do that with first names too. Will* instead of William for example .