Hello my genealogical friends and welcome back to another blog post! I hope that I am finding you well in your journey to continue to find records of your family lines! Previously, in other blog posts and material I have posted on my site I have given a brief overview of what sources you can seek out to find more of your ancestors’ stories. I may have even briefly mentioned the idea of searching census records and a few databases that you might want to check out. However, today I hope to further your knowledge and provide more context with what you can expect to find out of census records and how you can use the information to build your family tree.
As a little refresher I want to begin with laying out what a census is: A censuses in its most simple form is a survey conducted that gathers basic data or observations about a populous. For our purposes it is most usually conducted by a government and or authority of some sort. The history of the census in United States dates back almost to the time of its founding when in 1790 the first was conducted to satisfy Article 1 Section 2 of The Constitution which allows the seats of the House to be apportioned correctly. For today’s post we will be focusing specifically on U.S. Census records. However, censuses records can generally help us genealogists locate our ancestors during different time periods, learn about them and their neighbors, and contain basic documentation of and for family members within an ancestor’s household. Please keep in mind as you search for censuses records there may be a year or two unaccounted for. This could be due to some issue that resulted in the loss of the records.
Once you have identified a census record that may contain your ancestors’ information you will need to be aware of how the information might be written on the record. Most census records will have a heading form. This will contain information for each year outlined like this:
Local community
County
State
Ward
Supervisor District #
Enumerator
Data Census Taken
Enumerator District #
You may be confused by the terms Enumerator and Supervisor and who they might be to your ancestor. Please don’t be alarmed. Those are terms used by census record keepers in charge of gathering the data. There were three types of record keepers with distinct titles. Marshalls who collected the census between 1790-1870 every ten years. Supervisors then replaced Marshalls in 1870. Supervisor positions were advertised in the newspapers. There positions included other supervisor positions within the Census Bureau, but mainly oversaw and trained census takers. Enumerators are what we commonly census takers and were normally temporally employed and assigned an enumerated district to collect the information. To understand enumeration districts more fully please check out: https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1940/finding-aids. There you will be able to search the boundaries of specific enumerated districts.
I know that searching records can be overwhelming. If you still find yourself confused, or seeking assistance on a topic related to census records please feel free to check out my longer form webinar content located on this same webpage via the webinar tab. If you are still confused or have questions on subjects I haven’t covered in my blogs and webinars again feel free to reach out to me via the contact information located at the top of my site. Enjoy your journey and I’ll be back with more tips on my blogs soon and more webinars to help you navigate the toughest valleys of genealogy!
Winona Ione Laird “ The Genealogy Granny”
