The first U.S. census was taken on 2 August 1790 in response to the 1790 census act, signed by President George Washington, Vice President John Adams, and Speaker of the House Frederick Muhlenberg on 1 March 1790. This began the process of taking a census every ten years as mandated by Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution. The main purpose of the census was and is to determine the number of seats each state has in the U.S. House of Representatives to balance the power between the federal … [Read more...]
A New Development for German Census Records
A new development in German census records may make tracing your immigrant German ancestors more feasible than ever before!For genealogists tracing families in the United States, federal census records are one of the first sources searched for information – and for good reason. All of the enumerations from 1850 onward listed every member of the household by name. As time went on, the censuses became much more detailed and, depending on the year, included information such as the month and year … [Read more...]
7 Important Clues From the 1880 U.S. Census
Census reports, when available, are one of the backbones of genealogical research. They help us trace family members back and forth in time and provide a great deal of biographical information about each person, all in a neatly arranged table format. It is easy to focus on those all-important columns which provide the key facts: name, age, occupation, marital status, place of birth.The 1880 U.S. Census is well-known for being the first census to (finally!) report the relationship of each … [Read more...]
Know Your Special Census Schedules
The census is the backbone of American research. It is one of the first sources that new genealogists learn to use, and one of the most useful overall. Perhaps because of this ease of use and accessibility, sometimes researchers can have a tendency to overlook less obvious notations, or to speed through the record a little too quickly.Do you make a habit of reading all of the document, or do you simply note those “vital statistics” – name, age, parents, spouse, children – and move on? This … [Read more...]
Write a Captivating Family History with the 1900 Census
What were you doing at the turn of the century? Watching the Times Square Ball drop as Dick Clark prattled on? Were you hiding in a closet, worried about how Y2K would wreak havoc on your life? Were you partying like it was 1999?Author Ian Frazier masterfully wove together the happenings of the previous turn of the century with his own genealogical findings in the opening of his book, Family: “The Twentieth Century began on a Tuesday. On that day, all my great-grandparents but one were … [Read more...]
Genealogy by the Numbers
Here are a few facts and figures to spark your interest in Family History – or fan the flame!Do the math:You have two parents, four grandparents, and eight great-grandparents. If you count just the direct line ancestors, by the time you go back ten generations, you have 1,024 ancestors. Assuming that a generation is about 25 years, ten generations means going back 250 years to 1761. Then, if you figure that each family had an average of two children, coming forward in time you have 6,227 … [Read more...]
