Census Records: the good, the bad, and the ugly
A census record can either be your brick-wall busting best friend or a migraine inducing annoyance. I'll be using a clients tree as an example, as I've recently had a very bad census as well as a very good one.
Debbie's (my client) third great grandfather is Felix Stacey, born in Kentucky in 1823. In 1880 we find him in Perry co, Kentucky with his wife and children. Now I have a marriage license and multiple other census records, so I know for a fact who his family is. Felix married Cynthia Couch in 1850, and they had nine children: Polly Ann, John, Farmer, Peter, Granville, Nancy, Rachel, Alford, and Lucinda.
On the 1880 census, not all are living and not all live at home, but here's what the census reads:
Felix Stacy (suname spelled wrong)
wife: Sinthy Stacy (not even close)
children: Former, Loucinda, Granville, Rachel, Nancy, and Alford. (Well they got 4 of the 6 right anyway....)
If I hadn't known the names of the children from previous records, this would have at the very least left me with wrong spelling names for a little while, and at the worst I'd have skipped the record entirely thinking it was the wrong family. So why does this happen? In part due to the literacy (or lack thereof) in middle America in the 1800s. People didn't go to school long, they had things to do (mainly mining, farming, and child labor.) Children didn't go to school through 12th grade, they were lucky if they got through the fourth. There were farms to plow and plant, animals to tend, and yes, mines to, well, mine. Money had to be made to feed all the mouths that were required to run the family farm. Therefore, illiteracy ran rampant.
And it wasn't just the person who answered the door when the census taker knocked who was probably illiterate (and it could have been anyone. If a child was old enough they'd get to answer the questions, mom needn't be called over for such a trivial thing...) I'm sure they tried to get reliable information, but when your going to each and every door are you really going to wait for mom to have a break stirring the stew or bathing the baby to talk to some guy at the door? Probably not. The census taker was ordered to " visit personally each dwelling house in his sub-division, and each family therein, and each individual living out of a family in any place of abode, and by inquiry made of the head of such family, or of the member there of deemed most credible and worthy of trust, or of such individual living out of a family, to obtain each and every item of information and all the particulars." Sounds official. What if no one was home? Well they asked the neighbors. Literally. "Do I know the neighbor's daughter's middle initial? E...? T...? Oh, hell if I know, we just call her Pookie!"
You census taker, at least, was literate. Starting in 1880 he was hired hand trained to take the census. Before then, the US Marshalls had to do the job, largely untrained and uninstructed on what they were supposed to actually be doing. It wasn't even until 1830 that they were even giving something to write down the answers they were collecting. Still, your census taker could have been spelling things phonetically, like the one who obviously took Mr Stacey's records. Could the names have actually been spelled that way? It's possible. Birth records were often the family Bible, and if mom couldn't spell neither could anyone else, and who's to say how Lucinda is actually supposed to be spelled, anyway? I personally know a woman who's name is spelled Loratta, I thought it was a misprint on her paperwork, but no, mom just couldn't spell. You'll regularly get a name spelled a multitude of ways across several records.
Just because your census guy was literate, doesn't mean he had the most beautiful handwriting. And even if he did, there's several abbreviations and letter styles used then we no longer use now. Hell, my 13 year old isn't even being taught cursive, so I guess we all better be lucky these things are being digitized. But that's what I'm getting at....someone has to be able to read them to digitize the records. The handwriting has to be legible enough for someone to decisively say whether the letter they're looking at is a T or an L.
This is the 1860 census for our old pal Felix. Can you read this mess? Neither can I. But that's who does it; volunteers. Want a discount on your Ancestry membership? All you have to do is read and enter a few thousand census records, birth certificates, nationalization records, and a myriad of other legal documents. Yep, by and large, all that info that is so vital to our research is done by volunteers. Not all of it, and most of us are pretty serious about our work. But illegible is illegible and mistakes are inevitably made.
I promised some "good" to this post and I'm going to deliver, I promise. Census records, flawed as they can be, can also be your best friend and save your butt. Have a brick wall ancestor you Just. Can't. Find.? Your best friend can often be the census. After all, they had to live SOMEWHERE and if a census taker could reach the house, they'll be out there.
I've been desperately searching for Debbie's grandmother and search after search turned up nothing. I used Familysearch.com for this one, as I find it easier to browse specifics in census records. I tried what we thought we knew her name was, her husbands name, her sons name, all nothing, nothing, nothing. With a close-range brick wall ancestor of my own it was super frustrating to not be able to find them. Finally I searched her daughters name, and found three census records with names that were similar enough to raise a flag. But it was the census that saved me; in Detroit Michigan, nowhere near where I thought they'd be, but it had everything I needed and was verified by everything I knew to be true; that the children were Edward G and Edith Betty (all I knew and searched for was Betty. ) George E and Dorothy V (I'd been searching for her middle name, Valentine) with England as Dorothy's place of birth. The kids' birth years matched up to what I had and knew to be correct. It was the census that opened one door, which lead to many, many more hits and now I'm four generations back. All from one census.
Read those records, kids. You can learn a lot. Your ancestors birth year (estimated, but usually only one year off. Take these with a grain of salt, though! It's word of mouth after all.) where they were born, whether they rent or own their home, their address, their profession, whether or not they are literate (how ironic) the year they were married, how many children they've had and how many survive are all things you can learn in one fell swoop from a properly filled out census form.
They just may save your research. ;)
Debbie's (my client) third great grandfather is Felix Stacey, born in Kentucky in 1823. In 1880 we find him in Perry co, Kentucky with his wife and children. Now I have a marriage license and multiple other census records, so I know for a fact who his family is. Felix married Cynthia Couch in 1850, and they had nine children: Polly Ann, John, Farmer, Peter, Granville, Nancy, Rachel, Alford, and Lucinda.
On the 1880 census, not all are living and not all live at home, but here's what the census reads:
Felix Stacy (suname spelled wrong)
wife: Sinthy Stacy (not even close)
children: Former, Loucinda, Granville, Rachel, Nancy, and Alford. (Well they got 4 of the 6 right anyway....)
If I hadn't known the names of the children from previous records, this would have at the very least left me with wrong spelling names for a little while, and at the worst I'd have skipped the record entirely thinking it was the wrong family. So why does this happen? In part due to the literacy (or lack thereof) in middle America in the 1800s. People didn't go to school long, they had things to do (mainly mining, farming, and child labor.) Children didn't go to school through 12th grade, they were lucky if they got through the fourth. There were farms to plow and plant, animals to tend, and yes, mines to, well, mine. Money had to be made to feed all the mouths that were required to run the family farm. Therefore, illiteracy ran rampant.
And it wasn't just the person who answered the door when the census taker knocked who was probably illiterate (and it could have been anyone. If a child was old enough they'd get to answer the questions, mom needn't be called over for such a trivial thing...) I'm sure they tried to get reliable information, but when your going to each and every door are you really going to wait for mom to have a break stirring the stew or bathing the baby to talk to some guy at the door? Probably not. The census taker was ordered to " visit personally each dwelling house in his sub-division, and each family therein, and each individual living out of a family in any place of abode, and by inquiry made of the head of such family, or of the member there of deemed most credible and worthy of trust, or of such individual living out of a family, to obtain each and every item of information and all the particulars." Sounds official. What if no one was home? Well they asked the neighbors. Literally. "Do I know the neighbor's daughter's middle initial? E...? T...? Oh, hell if I know, we just call her Pookie!"
You census taker, at least, was literate. Starting in 1880 he was hired hand trained to take the census. Before then, the US Marshalls had to do the job, largely untrained and uninstructed on what they were supposed to actually be doing. It wasn't even until 1830 that they were even giving something to write down the answers they were collecting. Still, your census taker could have been spelling things phonetically, like the one who obviously took Mr Stacey's records. Could the names have actually been spelled that way? It's possible. Birth records were often the family Bible, and if mom couldn't spell neither could anyone else, and who's to say how Lucinda is actually supposed to be spelled, anyway? I personally know a woman who's name is spelled Loratta, I thought it was a misprint on her paperwork, but no, mom just couldn't spell. You'll regularly get a name spelled a multitude of ways across several records.
Just because your census guy was literate, doesn't mean he had the most beautiful handwriting. And even if he did, there's several abbreviations and letter styles used then we no longer use now. Hell, my 13 year old isn't even being taught cursive, so I guess we all better be lucky these things are being digitized. But that's what I'm getting at....someone has to be able to read them to digitize the records. The handwriting has to be legible enough for someone to decisively say whether the letter they're looking at is a T or an L.
This is the 1860 census for our old pal Felix. Can you read this mess? Neither can I. But that's who does it; volunteers. Want a discount on your Ancestry membership? All you have to do is read and enter a few thousand census records, birth certificates, nationalization records, and a myriad of other legal documents. Yep, by and large, all that info that is so vital to our research is done by volunteers. Not all of it, and most of us are pretty serious about our work. But illegible is illegible and mistakes are inevitably made.
I promised some "good" to this post and I'm going to deliver, I promise. Census records, flawed as they can be, can also be your best friend and save your butt. Have a brick wall ancestor you Just. Can't. Find.? Your best friend can often be the census. After all, they had to live SOMEWHERE and if a census taker could reach the house, they'll be out there.
I've been desperately searching for Debbie's grandmother and search after search turned up nothing. I used Familysearch.com for this one, as I find it easier to browse specifics in census records. I tried what we thought we knew her name was, her husbands name, her sons name, all nothing, nothing, nothing. With a close-range brick wall ancestor of my own it was super frustrating to not be able to find them. Finally I searched her daughters name, and found three census records with names that were similar enough to raise a flag. But it was the census that saved me; in Detroit Michigan, nowhere near where I thought they'd be, but it had everything I needed and was verified by everything I knew to be true; that the children were Edward G and Edith Betty (all I knew and searched for was Betty. ) George E and Dorothy V (I'd been searching for her middle name, Valentine) with England as Dorothy's place of birth. The kids' birth years matched up to what I had and knew to be correct. It was the census that opened one door, which lead to many, many more hits and now I'm four generations back. All from one census.
Read those records, kids. You can learn a lot. Your ancestors birth year (estimated, but usually only one year off. Take these with a grain of salt, though! It's word of mouth after all.) where they were born, whether they rent or own their home, their address, their profession, whether or not they are literate (how ironic) the year they were married, how many children they've had and how many survive are all things you can learn in one fell swoop from a properly filled out census form.
They just may save your research. ;)
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