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  If you are a new family historian, your first collected genealogical facts will be gathered from home sources; interviews with relatives; and by obtaining vital records. Based on what you learn in the first gathering of facts, the next step is a search in the U.S. Federal Censuses for your ancestors. An understanding of the dates and places where your people lived will be the clue to accessing the census records to use first. For example, if a death certificate reveals the place of birth of your grandfather as Alabama in 1911, that information should lead you to a written account in which your grandfather appears as a 9-year-old child in a family identified in the 1920 federal census. The key piece of information you would need to know to find this census record was the fact that the person was born in Alabama. As it turns out, if you know the place a person lived any time between 1790 and 1920, you can usually find them in a census. Genealogy Rule #9: A census record showing all twelve children in a family proves only that your ancestors did not believe in birth control. All names recorded in census records are organized by the places people live, such as a rural postal route, voting precinct, school district, township, village, town, or city. In all censuses, these places are all organized under a county, and then the counties gathered together for each U.S. state. So, finding the place where an ancestor lived is the starting point for census research. Uncle Sam has been in the business of taking censuses in the U.S. since 1790. Every ten years, lists of names of people are found in census records, and are a great resource for genealogy. The names of people in the censuses are easy to find and easy to use, since most of the decennial censuses have name indexes. Although there is a privacy law restricting information in a census for 72 years, the censuses from 1790 through 1920 are open to the public. So, a researcher can browse through census records looking for Abraham Lincoln, Jesse James, or an ancestor who was in the Poor House in Boston in 1850. Genealogists are looking forward to the opening of the 1930 census, which the National Archives has already announced will happen in April 2002. The first five censuses (1790-1840) recorded only the names of the heads of households living in every state. Beginning in 1850, the censuses were recorded by listing the names of every member of a household, making the federal census schedules from 1850 forward a tremendous source for finding families living in America. A majority of the old census name lists survive for all censuses, except 1890 (which was mostly destroyed after a fire in 1921) and most of the surviving manuscripts of the early censuses, 1790- 1880, are now located in the National Archives in Washington, DC. The censuses taken for 1900, 1910, and 1920 were microfilmed, but the originals were destroyed. Census research reveals the exact place on the ground where a person lived. There is much that can be learned about your ancestors here, but just learning where an ancestor lived in a certain time period can be all the clue you may need to find where even more written records are stored today. A rule in genealogy is to "work from the known to the unknown." Skipping generations is a no- no. Therefore, census research should be done by starting with the latest census with the best chance of finding an ancestor, and then working back in time, in ten-year intervals, to the earlier censuses. Following this rule, the starting point for census research for most genealogists is a name index to the 1920 census. The 1920 Soundex, an extraction of the full census name lists, indexes every head of household in America in 1920, and was originally recorded on thousands of 3"x 5" index cards. Once a head of household's name is found on one of the soundex index cards, any other household members are also named, along with their ages, places of birth, and their relationship to the head of the house. Thus, the 1920 Soundex is not an every-name index, but virtually every name appears on the soundex cards. Genealogy Rule #10: Work from the known to the unknown. In other words, just because your name is Washington doesn't mean you are related to George.Even without knowing the full name of the head of household, locating a child in a family in the 1920 Soundex is possible. Let's say you have a death certificate for your grandfather who was born in Alabama in 1911. You know his name was John Henry Johnson, and that he would have been 9 years in 1920 and was probably living with his parents somewhere in Alabama. But let's assume that the name of John Henry Johnson's father, your great-grandfather, is not known. A search of the soundex cards for Alabama and the surname Johnson can be done, looking for any head of household named Johnson with a 9-year-old John Henry Johnson. Sound difficult? Well, there may have been dozens of heads of households named Johnson in Alabama in 1920, but searching the soundex cards is not as difficult as it may seem. It is a matter of looking at each card until you find the name of a child that matches what you know, which should then reveal the names of the parents. If you know the names of brothers or sisters of the child you are looking for, the search will have an even better chance of success. A soundex coding system is a method of indexing surnames by removing all vowels, extra letters, and then coding the hard sounds of the remaining letters. This indexing system allows you to find a person in the census whose surname can be spelled different ways. Rather than a strict alphabetical listing of the names of heads of households, the list is organized in the order of the soundex code for a surname, followed by the first name of the person. As a result, a listing of the heads of households with the surnames Cooley, Couley, Cooly, Couly, or Coolley would all appear under the Soundex Code C-400, then alphabetically by their first names, as shown below: SOUNDEX To find out what the Soundex Code is for any surname, use the Internet site shown below. This web page has an automatic and instant soundex generator, based on any name you type, and includes a good explanation of the Soundex coding system: As a backup, two other web sites will calculate a soundex code for any surname: The first soundex indexes were originally prepared by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the late 1930s as an aid to finding evidence of a person's age. With the advent of Social Security in 1935, an index was needed to more quickly access the census schedules and provide people with proof of age in lieu of a birth certificate. Thus, the soundex system was created, which was used to index all or parts of the 1880, 1900, 1920, and 1930 censuses. A partial soundex index to the 1910 census was also done by the Census Bureau's Age Search Group in the early 1960s. As the latest census open to the public until the year 2002, the 1920 census is the first place to start for searching federal census records for your ancestors, and the 1920 soundex index is the tool for locating a specific family. All of the 1790-1920 federal census name lists are open to the public, and are available on microfilm at many different libraries and archives across the country. Digital Microfilm CDs (digitized census images on CD-ROM) are also available from Heritage Quest of Bountiful, Utah. Although there are just a few public libraries with all of the censuses 1790-1920, state libraries and larger city libraries have census microfilms for their entire state and in some cases, a larger region of adjoining states. For example, the Alabama Department of Archives and History in Montgomery has all U.S. federal census microfilm for Alabama plus their collection includes film for other states where early Alabama settlers lived before migrating there, such as Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia. And Alabama also has a great genealogical collection at the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library, which includes federal census microfilms for most of the southern states. Virtually all states have more than one library or archives with complete census film for that state. The following is a list of some of the major genealogical research facilities in the U.S., particularly those with complete microfilm sets of the U.S. Federal Census Schedules, 1790-1920; all Soundex Indexes on microfilm, 1880-1920; and all other published census indexes.
William Dollarhide is a valued member of the Heritage Quest staff. A genealogist since 1971, he started the Dollarhide Systems for Genealogical Records and founded the Genealogy Bulletin, a Heritage Quest publication since 1994, making its online debut in '99. In addition to his Bulletin articles, he writes features for Heritage Quest Magazine and numerous monograph titles. Mr. Dollarhide is a compelling speaker and has been recognized for his genealogical merits by numerous organizations. He is the author of seven best-selling books:
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The Census Book, by William Dollarhide JUST $24.95 CD Included |
Genealogy Rule #10: Work from the known to the unknown. In other words, just because your name is Washington doesn't mean you are related to George. |
