Hello my genealogical friends! I am happy to welcome you back to another blog post. Throughout the course of these blogs, we have covered many different types of sources instrumental in expanding our family trees. Whether you are a beginner, intermediate, or professional genealogist I hope that our explorations so far have helped you in your research. Todays, source of choice and discussion is supplemental census records.
As genealogists I am sure we are all familiar with or have at least heard in passing about census records. Generally, when census records are referred to it is most usually in its federal context where once every ten years an enumeration of the population is preformed mainly for tax and political representation purposes. As genealogists we are able to gather a numerous amount of information from these records from what are ancestors’ full names are to where they might have lived. Clearly, they are very helpful. However, sometimes we would like a little more information. Maybe to flush out parts of their stories that fall in between the ten-year interval of normal federal censuses. This is where supplemental censuses can become extremely useful.
There are two main camps that supplemental censuses can be divided into. The first of which is non-population censuses these entail veterans, mortality, slave, DDD, agriculture, Native American, territorial, manufacturing schedules and social statistics. The second section I will divide them into entails all state censuses. These special and specific censuses can provide details that a normal census may not. Examples might include: rank in military, genetic diseases, whether they were slave owners/slaves, disabilities, probate information, petitions for statehood, business types, and accounting of the community. Similarly, state censuses are also important as they can often serve as substitutes for federal censuses. As I am sure you have encountered in your research, sometimes records have been lost or damaged so I would recommend taking of advantage and looking for state censuses in these instances. Furthermore, it may be able to provide you with information on ancestors you may otherwise have to wait for. The federal census has a waiting period of about 72 years. If a census you would like to look at is within the waiting period you will have no other choice other than wait, unless you search out state census or other supplemental censuses that might give you similar and or more detailed information on your ancestors.
If you find yourself intrigued and want to get a hold of supplemental censuses now that you have discovered their value, I encourage you to look at familysearch.org, ancestry.com, and internet archives. There you will find digitized versions of some of these records. As always, I encourage you to keep yourself organized as you continue to add new sources to your project files/folders. If you find yourself overwhelmed by the amount censuses that might relate to your project, please see my blogs and webinars about research and research organization. If you still feel overwhelmed, please reach out to me directly and I will be happy to help! I hope that our discussion today about supplemental censuses have reignited your fire for genealogy research and or aided in the development of your projects! Till the next blog I wish you the best in your genealogy adventure!
Winona I Laird “The Genealogy Granny”
