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Using the Federal Census, Part II

© Deanna Corbeil

The census is a great place to start researching your family history. The Federal census schedules contain an enormous amount of information for family historians. They are of use for those curious about westward expansion, the status of freemen and slaves, history, immigration, and a host of other subjects.

The U.S. Census lists families and individuals living in each county and state, and has been done each decade since 1790. As a rule, each successive census contains more detailed information. Before you dive into your census research, keep a few facts in mind.

• The earlier the census, the less information there is available.
• Some of the census records have been destroyed.
• The census taker may have been poorly trained, or overworked, or may have not asked all of the questions. As much as we would like for the census workers to have been perfect recorders of all the data, the truth is some of them weren't very good employees, just like some of the people you work with today. Be careful of human errors.
• If families weren't home, the census taker may have obtained information from a neighbor or from young children.
• A census taker may not have asked how to spell a name. In many cases, the person being questioned may have been foreign-born with an accent, or may have been illiterate. In any of these cases, the name may have been spelled incorrectly.
• The handwriting may be difficult to decipher.

These are some of the drawbacks of Federal census data. This doesn't mean that the information you'll obtain from the census is useless, it just means you should keep in mind some of its flaws when you are researching.

You can find all of the U.S. censuses at the 11 offices of the The National Archives. The U.S. Census Bureau has published a booklet that gives a great overview of the census records available through the National Archives, and can be accessed here. A variety of the censuses are also available at state and genealogy libraries, as well as Family History Centers. The Family History Library in Salt Lake City has all the Federal censuses on loan through your local Family History Center. There are also online census resources available. Always check with the US GenWeb sites for the states and counties in which you are interested. Many of these sites are making available some census data for their particular regions. A couple of commercial sites are placing actual digital images of the U.S. census, along with indexes, on their web pages. Ancestry.com and Genealogy.com both charge fees for viewing these images and a great deal of other data, but you may find the relatively small amount worth it.

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