Comments on: Family History Basics – Lesson 4 (Census)

By: BruceC

BruceC — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:47:25 +0000

As a follow up on the census maps, as it turns out, for the census I want there are two kinds of districts: Enumeration Districts and Civil Districts. The enumeration districts were created by the census department. Only they have the maps/descriptions. When it was practical, the census takers used civil districts instead, which are available from multiple sources. The census will say if it is a civil or enumeration district. In my case it was a civil district. I was able to find a map with description in the State Library archives. More on that adventure here.

By: BruceC

BruceC — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:33:11 +0000

And to think I spent the first 7 years I was married working within a few miles of the National Archives in DC. Now the closest one is in Atlanta, 4+ hours away. At $51 a roll, it would be cheeper to buy just the roll I need than drive down to the archive. But your idea to check with the local historical society is a good one. Thanks.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 21:06:45 +0000

Hurray! Both for your following through with this and for your success! And you beautifully illustrate the challenges of the census while proving that the people you want can still be found despite it all. Both maps and word descriptions of the various enumeration districts exist, but at horrendously expensive purchase costs from the National Archives (NARA). If you live near one of the NARA branch offices, you could check them there. See here for information about the miles of microfilm which contain these maps and descriptions for 1930. Sometimes local historical societies have prepared maps or descriptions for their own areas. Beyond calling around or checking the catalogs for state and university libraries in the region, I don't have suggestions. Can anyone else offer something? (Re: Ancestry's different versions: The census (all years) is complete on the public versions; what has been pared down is access to some of the many other types of records that Ancestry provides. You don't have to wonder whether the public version has the complete index or skips your state or anything like that -- the census is complete.)

By: BruceC

BruceC — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:24:00 +0000

I just finished my first foray in to the federal census. I used the a public library account for ancestry.com. I understand it is a little pared down from the private version, though I couldn’t tell you how.

I went in looking for the daughters of William and Malinda Conder, who survived the Cane Creek Massacre. I found them in 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930. I found it relatively easy to use. The spelling variations were the biggest challenge. I am upto 9 different spellings of the youngest daughter’s first name. Lavina > Lavica > Lavicia > Vica > Vicie > Visa > Alisa. Even with soundex, I was having problems. Some of the alternate spelling came from other documents

But I loved being able to look and the rest of the entries on the page and see relatives I already knew of. I had to do this to find the family on the 1930 census. Lavina Conder had by then evolved into Alisa Holey (in the index at least). And Rachel Condor in Rachel Conda.

Any idea how to track down the location or boundries of the civil districts listed in the census?

By: Maurine

Maurine — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 22:02:54 +0000

I didn’t want to confuse anyone with my census process, and I certainly didn’t intend to go over Ardis’s head with my explanation. She is the teacher here, not me (and a good one, at that). But I wanted to let anyone who is not using the census records know what a great source they are.

By: Velikiye Kniaz

Velikiye Kniaz — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:33:12 +0000

While researching my foster son’s maternal line in preparation for having their temple work done, I was amused to find that a census taker listed the birthplace of an ancestor’s neighbor as “Ne Brasky”!

Once, when working on a branch of my own family that lived near a fort manned by the U.S. Army Cavalry, I found that the soldiers in both the ‘brig’ (jail) and the infirmary were enumerated including their offenses and their social deseases, which our own notorious Butch Cassidy euphemistically called ‘town disease’.

Thus, censuses can be quite entertaining as well as informative!

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:28:49 +0000

Oops, that came out wrong — even with that education, Bruce, I’m still impressed by the generally good quality of the indexing because the census is all handwritten, in thousands of different hands. The lines are close together, and it can be difficult to tell whether that loopy mark is part of a capital “B,” or only the tail of a “y” trailing from the line above. You generally can recognize the name you’re looking for because you have it in your mind’s eye, but reading it cold, the way an indexer did, had to have been a challenge.

By: BruceC

BruceC — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:37:57 +0000

Having served in Hong Kong and worked with many Chinese people, I’ll just say that the Chinese education system is very good at teaching English spelling (names are not included) and vocabulary. Where it falls down is on pronuciation, sentence structure, and idioms. So it doesn’t really surprise me that the Chinese would be able to do a reasonable job at indexing.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 14:00:10 +0000

True dat, Maurine. I suppose I should be impressed that indexers unfamiliar with our names (or even our alphabet — weren’t the indexers Chinese?) could do as well as they did, but the misreadings can be both frustrating and really amusing. If readers do write for help, chances are the difficulties will be because of indexing, and then I’ll use those puzzlers to suggest some ways to work around those difficulties.

And as you point out, the online census images can be saved electronically (and cleaned up) like any other image, and the data entered into a genealogy database the same as any other event. If someone new to genealogy is struggling to learn how to search the census efficiently, I don’t want to distract him or her by adding instructions for those technical chores — but others more comfortable with the whole thing could certainly take the hint and think about capturing the electronic image for their own files. Thanks!

By: Maurine

Maurine — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 04:49:40 +0000

Ardis,
I have my own subscription to Ancestry.com so I have been collecting census records for my ancestors beginning with my mother and father. When I find the census, I copy it to a file, then pull it up in PhotoShop and crop the black edges and straighten it up, even adding more contrast or whatever so that it is readable. Then I type the info verbatum into an event field and attach the scanned copy to the event. I copy the information after typing the information to the first person in the family, then it is very easy to paste the same info into an event field for every person in the census record.

This seems like a lot of work, but it isn’t really. I hope it makes sense.

You might want to caution your readers about the weird spellings in the on-line index, with indexing done by non-USA workers. Some of the names are really strange and funny.