Census Records

Census Record ThumbnailNow that you know the basics, where do you go to start your research? That’s an easy question to answer — particularly if your family has a significant history in the United States or another country with easy access to census records.

United States Census Records

There are two things that make U.S. census records the best place to begin your search:

  1. Access to census images and indexes are available for FREE from several services in the United States. You don’t even have to leave your home. Don’t even think about blowing hundreds of dollars for an Ancestry.com membership when you’re just getting started!
  2. Census records almost always provide the most amount of information for the least amount of research for beginning genealogists — and they are a staple resource for experts as well!

Where to access census records

Two of the best free choices for census record searches are LDS (Church of the Latter Day Saints) and HeritageQuest. To make the best of what they both offer, you will want to use both:

  1. First, log into FamilySearch.org, the gateway to information stored by LDS. This website doesn’t limit your searches to census information, but that is where most information will come from. The benefit of FamilySearch is that it includes a wonderful index of the census data. This means you don’t have to struggle with reading handwritten census images yourself. All of the data is provided in easily readable text that can even be copied and pasted into your database to reduce transcription errors.
  2. Of course even when you find the raw information there is still value in seeing copies of the original census pages. For this, you can go to HeritageQuest and download the images for free. There is a slight catch here, in that HeritageQuest requires authentication to search and download images. In most cases, all you need to do is have a library card for your local library. You can find your library’s website at publiclibraries.com, and they should provide you with a link to HeritageQuest. Click the census record search and you can easily find the images where the information came from in your FamilySearch results!

What the census records provide

Census records are valuable not just because of their availability, but also because of the vast amounts of information they provide about individuals and families. The United States takes a census every ten years and as you may have imagined the information collected seems to change each time. The National Archives website gives a ton of items that can be collected from the various years. Almost all years provide these basic items:

  • First name and surname for all household members,
  • Relationship to head of household,
  • Sex,
  • Age or month/year of birth,
  • Place of birth,
  • Occupation, and
  • Nationality

As you get a little practice in searching census records, you’ll quickly realize how easy it can be to trace back through additional generations. Pay close attention to all of the clues, and don’t always assume you have a match just because you matched names and place/date of birth. When you record census information in your database, keep accurate citations so you can go back and review them again when you have questions in the future. A census record citation should look like this:

John Doe household, 1930 U.S. census, population schedule, Manhattan, New York County, New York, ED 19-42, SD 14, sheet 1A, dwelling 15, family 142; National Archives.