Thursday, August 5, 2010

Census Records

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I highly recommend anyone with family in American from 1850 to 1930 to research their families Census Records.  The amount of information can be quite astounding.  Census Records are available from 1790 to 1840 but since they only name the head of house hold and a / in box by age and gender is can be quite complex to figure if that family belongs in your family tree.  The 1850 Census changed all that.  They began listing everyone in the house including servants, boarders, and laborers.  How wonderful it can be to find another family member listed as a servant or laborer in a relatives house and have them listed as how they are related to head of house hold.  In my own family there was a story about a family member who had moved away and our family passed down stories and  theories of what had become of him and his family.  Through Census records we found they were all well and both father and then son had become inventors.  That wasn't even close to what the family who stayed behind had thought.  Now we get to chuckle at the the old stories and how they could have come up with the stories they did.

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