The National Census
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Using the census records in your family search.
The United States of America counts its citizens every ten years. This count is used by the government to distribute services, plan infrastructure improvements, such as schools and highways, and to adjust political representation. In theory, every man woman and child is enumerated by name, address, date of birth, relationship to the head of household, sex, citizenship, employment type, education and ethnicity. People who are in the country illegally, the homeless, and those who cannot be contacted are not counted. A percentage is added at the end of the census to include these people.
Over the years other information has also been collected, such as country of origin, date of immigration, date of naturalization, and language spoken in the home.
Imagine, every decade, every person, in every residence, from 1790 through 2000. This is a world of information for the genealogist. However, there are some problems mixed in with all of this very reliable data. In early censuses, not everybody could write. Name misspellings were common. It is hard to believe, but some people lie about age, or number of children, and citizenship. Due to privacy laws, only statistical data is available for the first sixty years after the census is taken. No individual’s information is currently available since 1930. This can be a problem for the genealogist. And worst of all, the 1890 census records were destroyed by a fire in a warehouse in Washington, DC.
All in all, the national census is probably one of the most useful tools the modern genealogist has at his or her disposal.
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