April 18, 2025

I’ve been doing genealogy for decades. I’ve searched for records for my ancestors from county courthouses in obscure towns to the FamilySearch Library Salt Lake City. I’ve tramped through cemeteries in the United States and Europe. I’ve ordered pension files from the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

Each helped me to find out more about my ancestors. However, not everyone is able to travel extensively as I’ve done. Luckily, one of the best sources for U.S. research is available to everyone from the comfort of their own home.

That resource is the U.S. Census. The censuses give a researcher a glimpse of their ancestors as they were at a specific time. Nowhere else will you find as much information in one place.

The census has been taken every ten years since 1790. Almost all of them are still extant. The 1890 census was burned in a fire in 1921, and some of the very early censuses have been lost.

The censuses before 1850 list only the head of the household. Other members of the family are designated by hash marks indicating approximate age and sex. While not as helpful as later censuses, these early censuses can be useful in locating a family in a particular time and place.

Censuses beginning in 1850 list every person by name.  Each of the censuses includes a slightly different set of information but usually includes approximate ages, sex, marital status, occupation and place of birth.

Many genealogists, including me, consider the 1900 census their favorite. That’s because the 1900 census gives a year of birth for every person listed as well as the month the person was born. For people not born in the United States, it also includes the year the person arrived in the U.S., whether the person was naturalized or not and the number of years the person had lived in the United States.

The 1900 census is especially informative about women since it includes the number of children she had given birth to and how many were currently alive. This informational can be a clue to additional unknown children.

The best part of the U.S. censuses is their broad availability. Almost every genealogy website contains all the currently available censuses. Ancestry, Find My Past, My Heritage and Family Search all provide complete runs of the U.S. census.

Whether you’re researching your first ancestor or your thousandth, the census is an essential resource.

 

Carol Stetser

Researcher

Larimer County Genealogical Society