Hopefully by now, you have spent time gathering existing information, including family stories, starting your pedigree (June 25, 2020), and interviewing relatives (July 23, 2020).
My last few columns talked about some of the basic records we use to prove our family history, namely birth, marriage and death records (vital records).
But census records are even more foundational, so let’s talk about those, especially since we just had one (and it’s still making news.)
Every 10 years since 1790, the US Constitution has required the government to conduct a counting (enumeration) of the population. It didn’t detail how, by whom or what to ask.
The Founding Fathers likely didn’t have family history in mind at the time, but the federal census is invaluable to our research.
Why do genealogists and historians use census records? At the very least, it verifies the existence of our ancestors in a specific place (even their address in modern censuses) on a specific day and something about the household.
The first few censuses were very simple. They asked few questions, since the main purpose was to count the population.
Over time, as political and policy considerations came into play, more questions were asked, and they became more invasive — thankfully. Consequently, we have more detailed snapshots of our ancestors lives every decade.
Starting in 1850, each household member was named, unless they were enslaved and starting in 1880, their relationship to the head of the household was asked.
Almost every decade the questions were different, which is one reason it’s important to see each census for the entirety of the person’s life.
Over time, census takers asked each person’s age, marital status, occupation, birthplace (country or state), language, birthplace of parents and immigration information. One census (1930) even asked if the household owned a radio.
For Jews, those questions about immigration and parents birth country can be big clues in determining their ancestors’ origins although all too often, the answer was simply “Russia.”
Census records during the early 1900s can provide critical information about citizenship status.
A challenge for researchers are the names of non-English speaking immigrant families, especially how they may have changed. Misspelled or badly transcribed names are one of the biggest obstacles in finding ancestors.
One strategy is to try misspelling the name or spelling it phonetically.
Keep in mind that while census information is quite interesting, it is may not be Absolute Truth. For a variety of reasons, wrong information is sometimes recorded, so use caution.
It was not uncommon for neighbors and children to give answers to the census taker when the adults were not home.
The census has always been controversial and political, since it determined funding and voting representation for states, among other purposes. Consequently, some states have challenged the counts, and also decided to do their own census, mostly starting in the mid-1880s through the early 1900s.
Federal censuses are conducted in years ending in “0,” but states often conducted their count in years ending in “5.”
Most of these state census takers didn’t ask as many questions as the Federal census — but they can be valuable, especially for tracking people who don’t appear in other records.
For privacy reasons, census records are not available for 72 years, which means that the most recent census we can see is 1940 — the 1950 census will be released in April, 2022.
Censuses since 1790 have been digitized and are available on several different websites.
A number of the 1790-1810 census records have been lost for a variety reasons.
But the biggest loss is the 1890 census, a critical year for Jewish immigration — almost the entire census was destroyed by fire and water damage in 1921.
Where can you find census records? The major databases have all of them, including Ancestry, FamilySearch, MyHeritage and FindMyPast.
Of those four, only FamilySearch is free.
Depending on the database, you can also find some state censuses, not all of them have been digitized yet.
How to use those databases, including using their search engines effectively — and how to use them all for free — will be subjects of upcoming columns.
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