Whether you embark on a Genealogy, Family History, or Local
History project, you need to consider the types of information you have and
what you seek or want to uncover. As a librarian, my focus is identifying the
question, considering the types of records that hold or reveal bits of
information, and then locating different resources or records. It is all about
learning about the records and documents, understanding the resources. Once you
have an idea of the types of resources and records available, the trick is to
find the data you desire.
Where do you start? Some will say at the beginning with what
you know about the topic, the family, or the event. If you have a lot of
information already, then you start with your questions. Let’s start with what
we already know, having started ancestor / pedigree charts and family group
sheets. The next step is census records to build a skeleton.
Why the census? These records are completed and compiled
every ten years by the federal government and provide a snapshot of individuals
and communities. You can use census records to compile demographics, learn how
a community, township, county, or state changed, study immigration and
migration patterns, and collect data about individuals. In each decade, the
census bureau collected different types of information by asking different
questions. Some questions are the same decade by decade; others are different
making it complicated to draw conclusions. This is true of census records in
the United States, Mexico, Canada,
and the UK.[1] There
are other census records compiled by states and territories but here we will
look primarily at US records unless otherwise indicated.
In 2013, the easiest way to access census records is through
one of the various online databases. Ancestry www.ancestry.com
, Family Search www.familysearch.org
, Heritage Quest www.heritagequest.com
(through your local public library), and Internet Archive http://archive.org/index.php all have
digital images of census records. Each provides access through their own
indices that aren’t necessarily the same. There is also microfilm for each
census year (1790-1880, 1900-1940), and in rare cases, paper copies. Paper
indices provide access to census records, again varying depending upon the year
and the person or organization that indexed the records. Soundex and Miracode
provide access through their coded names and associated abstract cards. Depending
upon the complexity of your search, you may need to search the census using all
the resources mentioned above. Check out your local library’s genealogy and
local history collection to learn what types of census records and indices they
have.
My next entry will describe the types of questions answered
by census records.
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