Census Resources

U.S. Census Research Online Resources

Why use the census?

You can use the census to --
Find birthplace of head of household, his children and parents
Identify family relationships · Find ancestor as a child to identify his parents.
Learn year of immigration, naturalization status, and birthplace of parents giving another avenue of research.
Learn veteran status to request pension records which can give birth and death dates, proof of marriage and children's births, and much more.
Learn more. · Learn ancestor's address so that you can visit ancestral house.

U.S. census history
http://www.rootsweb.com/~census/help/history.html

1780s US constitution written and ratified, requires a census every 10 years for apportioning representatives. States may have additional ones as needed.
1790 First census taken, over a period of 18 months. Records of six states destroyed during War of 1812, but reconstructed from tax records.
1800-1820 First Monday in August designated as Census Day.
1830-1900 June 1st designated as Census Day. All but 6160 names in the 1890 census were later destroyed in a fire in 1921
1910- Other specific dates designed as Census Day

Tips for census research

Information was to be recorded as of the official census day, not the day the enumerator came. Depending on how closely the enumerator and person giving information followed instructions and remembered correctly, the information might have been given as of any time in that range,. This can result in the same people being enumerated in different locations.
It wasn't unheard of to get the information from a neighbor or sometimes the only person at home would be one of the kids who "thinks maybe he was born in....".
Not everyone in the household is necessarily a family member, and a blank surname doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the same as the head of household.
Another thing to watch for is what was known as "padding the census". Enumerators were usually paid by the number of households they visited. If it was a very rural area they were paid a little more per household as the dwellings were much fewer. Some really good examples are at ftp://ftp.us-census.org/pub/usgenweb/census/ny/cayuga/1860/notes.txt In Ira, NY there’s a deceased person on the census records. In Fleming, NY some families are duplicated with minor changes two or three times.
Great website searching tool (One-Step) located at http://stevemorse.org/#us

Tour of online databases:

Ancestry (Ancestry.com)	Paid Membership	FamilySearch (familysearch.org)	FREE
Largest paid membership site, and has both indexes and images for federal, state, and international censuses.		Largest free indexing site for US federal, state, and international censuses.
They also have several free resources like 1880 US federal, 1881 UK, and state censuses for AL, MN, NM, KS.		1850, 1870, and 1900 US federal Census and several states such as NY, MN, FL, and IL have free images without account.
		With a FamilySearch.org account, 95% of their indexes link to images including most US federal censuses except 1880 and 1930.
		Heritage Quest	FREE with library card
Archives.com (Archives.com)	Paid Membership	Index and images for most US federal censuses
Indexes for 1790-1830 US federal census, and images for 1850, 1870, 1900.		Search for genealogy database at your local library website.
Partial UK and Canada Census Indexes

World Vital Records (worldvitalrecords.com)	Paid Membership
2 different sets of images from 1790-1930 from different microfilms.		There are two different census record transcription projects from USGenWeb:
1860 and 1930 Indexed		usgwcensus.org	FREE
		us-census.org	FREE
Fold3.com (fold3.com)	Paid Membership	Organized by state, county, city. Each state varies on information available.
1860 +1930 US Census Index and images		Some only have every-name indexes, some are transcriptions.
		May or may not have images available.
UK Censuses	Paid Memberships
findmypast.com 1841-1891 UK and Scotland; 1831, 1901-1911 UK		USGenWeb Archives – Online Census Images	FREE
scotlandspeople.gov.uk 1841-1911 UK and Scotland		usgwarchives.net
genesreunited.co.uk 1841-1911 England and Wales		Separate ad-hoc indexes for some counties/years: some surname only, some head of household, some every name
thegenealogist.co.uk http://www.ukcensusonline.com http://www.freecen.org.uk		B/W images for some counties/years
Census hosted by country
Denmark -http://ddd.dda.dk/dddform2_uk.asp		Allen County Public Library archive.org/details/allen_county	FREE
Sweden - http://www.svar.ra.se/		Allen County Library in Fort Wayne has partnered with archive.org to digitalize its copy of the US Federal censuses.
Norway - http://digitalarkivet.no		Each reel is its own PDF and searching these images can be very cumbersome. However, useful if you do not have a membership to a paid site.
Ireland - http://census.nationalarchives.ie/search/

Pages with links, including county specific research	FREE	Census Research Tools
censuslinks.com		stevemorse.org/#us
censusfinder.com		cyndislist.com/us/census
censusdiggins.com		ancestorhunt.com
census-online.com		newhorizonsgenealogicalservices.com
ukbmd.org.uk/census