The Census and Genealogy

Why are the censuses so important to your quest for information on your ancestors, and why are they among the first records to search? Widely available, they place your ancestors in a specific place at a specific time, and the related information on them leads you to other locations and records.

The objective of the census is to account for every individual living in the United States on a designated day. The chances are good that your ancestors were enumerated if they resided in the United States on the day the census was taken.

What can you learn from the census? At various times the census questions pertain to military service, citizenship, marital status, and other topics. Some responses will surprise you. Thinking the family 100 percent Southern, you may be flabbergasted to find that Great-Grandpa was a Union vet from the Civil War. If family tradition says that your third great-grandfather was born in Ireland, but the census information says he and his father were both born in Virginia, then you have a discrepancy to check.

The census may be the first place you find your ancestors in their family groupings. Maybe Grandma is older than you thought, or your mother has an older brother no one mentions.

Preparation Saves Frustration

Before you go to your computer or head out to a repository to search the census records for your family, do your homework. Make a list of the likely heads of households (person in charge of the family unit, such as husband/father, grown son, or widow) for whom you have gathered some information from talking to your relatives and going through all the material you found at home. Be sure to include any variant spellings of the surnames.

For each individual on your list, add a time period (the estimated dates of their life spans based on what you already know) and a probable state and county of residence.

For example, take a look at the following sample of a census search:

The approximate birth dates of the individuals on your list will indicate a starting point for the census search. (The 1890 census is omitted from the list because it is virtually nonexistent.) Which ones would likely be on the 1930 census? Which on the 1910 census? If your parents were children in 1920 or 1930, they will be enumerated with whomever they were living with at that time: parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, orphanages, or other.

Unless you suspect otherwise when you begin, assume that ancestors under ages 18 to 21 were living with their parents, and start your research with those parents. Group your list of individuals by the areas where you expect they were living.

Where Did They Live?

The county is the division of government where you begin to look for your ancestors in official records, so first determine in which counties your ancestors' towns belong. If their town has disappeared from current maps, look up the town in a gazetteer. There may be several towns of the same name; be sure to get the one in the area where your ancestors lived. Gazetteers can often be found in state or university libraries. An 1895 United States gazetteer is online at www.livgenmi.com/1895. For more resources, check Cyndi's List under “Maps, Gazetteers & Geographic Information.”

The closer you can locate the residence for your ancestors, whether street address, township, or ward, the more quickly your search is likely to go. However, don't be discouraged if those are the very things you are hoping to uncover by searching the census. You will be successful; it will just take a little longer. If you are unable to zero in on a county, the search is not hopeless. Examine the state census indexes carefully for your ancestors' surnames. You can often determine the county from those indexes by noticing where there are clusters of the surname. The addition of searchable online census indexes makes it possible to sometimes find an ancestor even if you do not know the state. However, be aware that if the name is a common one, you may get too many returns to narrow down to a reasonable number to check.

Which Census to Search First?

Because of privacy laws, the latest census available for research is the 1930 census. Generally, you will start your research with the most recent censuses, 1930, 1920, 1910, or 1900, and track the individuals back through each census taken during their lifetimes. The objective is to conduct a complete census search for each individual on your list. You may wonder why you need to keep getting additional censuses when you found them in one census listing. There are three main reasons: You want to compare the data you find, the composition of the household may change, and each census has different information that can lead you to other records.

Last Touches for Your List

Your research list should now be a list of individuals with some indication of the census years in which you may find them listed, the probable counties and states in which they lived during those years, and the most recent available census on which you might expect to find them. At this point, to prepare for your search for the actual census enumerations, it's time to code the surname for each individual on your list that you will be searching for in the censuses of 1930, 1920, 1910, 1900, and 1880. (The 1890 population census is virtually nonexistent, nearly all of it having been destroyed by a fire, January 21, 1921, in the Commerce Department building.)

Excerpted from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Genealogy © 2005 by Christine Rose and Kay Germain Ingalls. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Used by arrangement with Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

To order this book visit the Idiot's Guide web site or call 1-800-253-6476.