You were then asked to find a sample census record for each census year between 1850 and 1930. Sample original census films are often available at local Family History Centers. Call for times or directions. Use www.familysearch.org to obtain contact informations for the more than 4,000 centers available world-wide. If you cannot find a film on your own family, select any image for the year as these give you experience in using the various census records.

You can also locate a sample of each census year at www.Ancestry.com which is available at many local Family History Centers, or online at www.familysearch.org by clicking on the SEARCH RECORDS tab and then selecting Record Search Pilot from the drop down list. Next click on the words "Search or Browse our record collections." Click on the map of the United States. Scroll down the list of records now available. As of October 11, 2010 they have indexed and linked to images the 1920, 1910, 1900, 1880, 1870, 1860, and 1850 census records. Also the 1850 Mortality Schedule. The only one you cannot obtain freely at this moment is the 1930 census. For this reason, let me give you some highlights about the 1930 census.

One advantage to the 1930 census is the requirement by the United States Census Bureau calling for the name of the street, avenue, road, and house number which helps link people on the census with city directories which could provide other family information. Few city directories are on line today, but a handy site for finding the availability of those in libraries is found at www.uscitydirectories.com.

Another unique item about the 1930 census is the question asked as to whether the family owned a radio. The government wanted to know if the radio could be used as a medium to reach all of the people in a timely manner. Two other items mentioned on this census was the age of each person at their first marriage (sometimes the only clue you have that a person may have married someone else before); and if they had attended school or college any time since September 1, 1929. Be sure to transcribe or copy everything you find on your ancestor from each column as many clues are available on this latest census that we can currently access. Look at the language spoken in the home by the parents prior to immigration as this can lead to a specific area of birth. Notice if anyone was a veteran of the U.S. Military or Navel Force, and if so which war of expedition. Unfortunately, the farm schedules have not survived for this year.

Using a good Census History Form can also provide you with an example of what might be found during each census year as well. Copies of these forms are available at local Family History Centers, some can be downloaded at www.ancestry.com, at www.familysearch.org, or if you find you really like the way our company's form helps you analyze your family, you can order those online at www.GRAonline.com.

However, there is a great advantage to doing this assignment by actually looking at and comparing the various census years. For one thing you will be able to compare the legibility of these records. You may find that surnames have many variant spellings as you go further back in time.

The supplemental computer checklist for this lesson will provide methods for entering census records into your computer.

Try to check out an online census service at www.ancestry.com or www.heritagequest.com (available through ProQuest at many public libraries and college libraries). Local Family History Center computers are often programmed to allow you access to each of these areas for various purposes.

Comparisons

It is so easy to be ungrateful. Here I am typing pages for this class while I am performing a census search on the Internet. I can quickly toggle back and forth between projects, and I�m about to tell you it isn�t fast enough.

�Fast� is really relative. How long does it take to find ten 1850 census records if you count the time equally? I asked my contracted researchers to go to the Family History Library two blocks from my Salt Lake City office once and obtain ten census records for me. This was ordered over the phone from my house in California. In the same time, I did the same ten searches using my Internet services. By the time they returned, I had the same returns with the report written as well because I was writing the report while I was waiting for the images to upload and print.

So, while searching online may not be as fast with a normal speeded modem and service, it was still faster than doing the search in the library two blocks away from the repository. Since I lived two hours away from a federal archives, and gas was very expensive, I found it less expensive to do the searches online as well.

But are the searches always equal? No. Sometimes the electronic indexes are incorrect and I must look up the information by traditional means such as scanning through the images one at a time (it is faster on a microfilm reader) and then go make a copy (much faster on the computer). Sometimes the soundex coding finds someone on the 1900 census easier when it is a common name than the search engines on the site.

With several census transcriptions done at fee-based web sites or at www.familysearch.org many of the old obvious errors due to difficult handwriting, unusual or unfamiliar names, and other problems that are natural with any abstraction project, are not as bad as in the past. However, users are always encouraged to look at the original source before accepting all information as correct. Or at a minimum, they should indicate that the information came off of a secondary source (called a derivative source) such as a census transcription, so that others who use the information would be alerted to search the original. While searching original source documents other things might be noticed as well, such as the proximity of neighbors, initials, occupations, any titles, monetary value of the family, the type of area they lived in, and other identifying clues. Even if the source document is only an index to the original, spelling errors may be accounted for and corrected.

How about readability? There is very little that can be done about images that are so light that hardly anything can be read from them in the originals or the images. As you would imagine, using a census with an index is faster than one without an index. Another consideration is the site�s downtime. There were times when the site is down to allow the owners to upload new materials. This can be very frustrating if the very evening you can work on your genealogy, the site isn�t working.

I like Ancestry.com�s post-it notes beside documents. If you know something about that person, you can leave a trail behind you for the researcher�s of the future. While these sites are not perfect, they beat the old way of doing things when I had to find a name in a printed index and wait six weeks for the film to arrive. Then I had to travel twenty minutes to my local center to read the film. Now I can stay home and do research when my car isn�t working, I�m feeling poorly, or I don�t want to travel two hours away. If you have quick access to the films at a local library, the census searches may not be useful for you. But try the free offers (available at www.familysearch.org as explained previously, and your local Family History Centers).