Some people eat, sleep and chew gum, I do genealogy and write...

Friday, October 14, 2016

Moving Beyond Census Records: Part Seven


One of the more valuable websites for finding U.S. Federal Census information is CensusFinder.com, see http://www.censusfinder.com/index.htm. This website has links to most of the copies of the U.S. Census online as well as the separate schedules and even the state census records online. It also includes links to Canadian, Mexican census records and those from the United Kingdom.

Part of the 1890 U.S. Census was initially lost due to a fire and then later the remaining parts were lost because the government did not allocate funds to preserve the records and the unburned portions were destroyed. The only population schedules that survived are the following:
Roll 1 
Perry County, Alabama (Perryville Beat No.11 and Severe Beat No. 8) [fragments 1-455]. 
Roll 2 
District of Columbia. Q, 13th, 14th, R, Q, Corcoran, 15th, S, R, and Riggs Streets, Johnson Avenue, and S Street [fragments 456-781]. 
Roll 3 
Muscogee County (Columbus), Georgia; McDonough County (Mound Twp.), Illinois; Wright County (Rockford), Minnesota; Hudson County (Jersey City), New Jersey; Westchester County, (Eastchester); and Suffolk County (Brookhaven Twp.), New York; Gaston County (South Point Twp. and River Bend Twp.) and Cleveland County (Twp. No. 2), North Carolina; Hamilton County (Cincinnati) and Clinton County (Wayne Twp.), Ohio; Union County (Jefferson Twp.), South Dakota; Ellis County (J.P. No. 6, Mountain Peak, and Ovilla Precinct), Hood County (Precinct No. 5), Rusk County (No. 6 and J.P. No. 7), Trinity County (Trinity Town and Precinct No. 2) and Kaufman County (Kaufman) [fragments 782-1,233], Texas.
However, the Veterans Schedules did survive and are available online on Ancestry.com. Genealogical researchers are constantly running into unanswerable questions that could have easily been resolved if the 1890 Census had survived. The question field in the 1890 Census are as follows:
  1. Name of each person in household
  2. Relationship to Head of Household
  3. Personal Description
    - Age
    - Sex
    - Color
    - Birthplace
    - Marital Status (Single, Married, Widowed, Divorced)
    - Married within previous year
    - Month of Marriage, If married within the previous year
    - Deaf, dumb, blind or insane
    - Occupation
    - Sick or temporarily disabled
    - Maimed, crippled, bedridden or otherwise disabled
    - Convict
    - Prisoner
    - Homeless Child
  4. Place of Birth
    - Each person’s parents
  5. Education
    - Attended school in previous year
    - Ability to read and write in English
  6. Home Data
    - Value of Real Estate
  7. Citizenship
    - Number of years in US
    - Naturalization
    - Ability to speak English
  8. Veterans
    - Soldier, Sailor during the Civil War
  9. Location
    - Name of street and number of house
    - City/Village/Town/Borough
    - County
If your ancestors happen to be in one of the locations covered by the surviving records the surviving schedules can be searched online on Ancestry.com. 

The 1900 United States Federal Census added some extremely valuable genealogical information concerning the number of children born to the mother of the family and the number living at the time of the census. Here is the form.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/genealogy/charts-forms/1900-census.pdf
There were two questions added in the 1900 Census.
  1. Number of dwelling home in order of visitation by enumerator
  2. Number of family in order of visitation by enumerator
  3. Name
  4. Relation to head of the family
  5. Color or Race: Enumerators were to mark "W" for White, "B" for Black, "Ch" for Chinese, "Jp" for Japanese, or "In" for American Indian.
  6. Sex
  7. Date of Birth
  8. Age
  9. Was the person single, married, widowed, or divorced?
  10. How many years has the person been married?
  11. For mothers, how many children has the person had?
  12. How many of those children are living?
  13. What was the person's place of birth?
  14. What was the person's father's place of birth?
  15. What was the person's mother's place of birth?
  16. What year did the person immigrate to the United States?
  17. How many years has the person been in the United States?
  18. Is the person naturalized?
  19. Occupation, trade, or profession
  20. How many months has the person not been employed in the past year?
  21. How many months did the person attend school in the past year?
  22. Can the person read?
  23. Can the person write?
  24. Can the person speak English?
  25. Is the person's home owned or rented?
  26. If it is owned, is the person's home owned free or mortgaged?
  27. Does the person live in a farm or in a house? 
  28. If a person lived on a farm, the enumerator was to write that farm's identification number on its corresponding agricultural questionnaire in this column
There was also a separate schedule for the American Indian population with the following questions:
29. Indian Name
30. Tribe of this person
31. Tribe of this person's father
32. Tribe of this person's mother
33. Fraction of person's lineage that is white
34. Is this person living in polygamy?
35. Is this person taxed? An American Indian was considered "taxed" if he or she was detached from his or her tribe and was living in the White community and subject to general taxation, or had been allotted land by the federal government and thus acquired citizenship.
36. If this person has acquired American citizenship, what year?
37. Did this person acquire citizenship by receiving an allotment of land from the federal government?
38. Is this person's house "movable" or "fixed?" Enumerators were to mark "movable" if the person lived in a tent, tepee, or other temporary structure; they were to mark "fixed" if he or she lived in a permanent dwelling of any kind.
I like to speculate about how hard it was for the enumerators to get responses to many of the questions asked. Researchers should be always aware that the responses were only as reliable as the person who supplied the information. 

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