I am forwarding this as I feel that it is important especially for the newbies on the list. Jeannie <>< To: KYRESEARCH@rootsweb.com Subject: TIP #292 - DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT - THE CENSUS I have "hit" upon this topic before, but more and more I see new researchers, and some more experienced ones - just taking as Gospel truth everything they find. This might be from web sites, files, letters .... if someone else has it this way, it must be true. Not so! I have been doing genealogy for twenty-eight years now and still am finding my mistakes. Genealogy is not an exact science; we will never have everything right. But, we can do the best we can. If you pick up information, investigate it, dissect it, chew it over and sometimes, spit it out! It's lovely to be able to trace our family tree to famous political or historical characters, or tie into royalty. But ... some of us just can't do it. We just come from the average every-day pioneer stock. Just because the first name or the last name ties in with someone in a famous family, doesn't mean it's the same person. I'm sure there were a lot of namesakes for John Quincy Adams, George Washington or Daniel Boone. But, is OUR Daniel Boone THE Daniel Boone? Sometimes our ancestors were well-written; sometimes we throw a party if we can find them anywhere. They seemed to hide out at census taking time, didn't fight in any battles, never served on any juries, got married under an alias - whatever! But, they are our family and we do want to find them. Sometimes we find the "skeleton in the closet" too .... it's not our fault! One of the first and most important sources for our family tree search of course, is the census. Finding our family on an early census is wonderful but we need to be aware that there are built in problems with the census records as with any other printed source. George Washington was the one responsible for seeing that a 10-year census was taken in the United States. It became law in 1790 and is still proceeding. Realizing that in 1790, our country only had about 3,231,533 people; it wasn't quite as difficult as it is today. Slaves an Indians weren't counted - the government was more interested in the number of men who might be able to serve in the military if we again entered into a major war. Memories of the Revolutionary War were quite fresh in the minds of our leaders and many of those who had fought in that war were getting up in years. The English saw to it that most of the 1790 census was destroyed during the War of 1812. The only remaining records that provide data on the people of that census is from the tax records, and of course, only the head of household is listed, no females shown. It was also determined that the results of a census had to remain private for 72 years. One can understand the reasoning behind this - people might be more prone to snoop into private information or give false answers if they thought the whole world knew the real facts! The latest census available for public research is the 1920 census. Legally, the censuses cannot be copied or microfilmed until the end of the 72 years and this takes time too. Why there are errors on the census you might ask? Well, the main blame falls on the census takers and the people who answered the questions, and the transcriptions of the data ..... the list is endless. The census taker was a man ... just an ordinary man who was selected for the task. Like in today's world, some took the job more seriously than others. If the man could write (no matter how well), he was picked. He might be of French, Scotch, Irish or German background - hearing the names differently (as a Kentucky transplant I understand that!). His handwriting might be scribbled. They got tired, missed houses, got false information. Not all were uneducated of course - they could be farmers needing extra money on a year when the crops weren't doing well, teachers .... so we can't classify them all as uneducated. Thankfully, most of them lived in the area of enumeration however. Most were diligent and the results are as perfect as they could provide. They earned money - and it was hard-earned! No speedy cars - but by horseback, house after house. If we attempt to follow the trail of the census taker on his loyal steed, we might become quite disorganized. There were no specific laws on how this was to be done - they just said giddy-up go and took off for the nearest farm or house. Thus - even though the house numbers shown follow in sequential order, it did not necessarily mean that the two houses were next to each other. He could zigzag all over the place, cutting through the woods, coming back to houses where he had found no one at home earlier. He could cut home for dinner and then take out in a different direction, but the house numbers remained in order. Mary and Martha, having a neighborly back yard talk might show up many pages apart Most of the time, the people answering the census taker's questions were adult. But ... the weary census taker, hot from a long day's work, might have to resort to asking children or great-grandma the questions. Can you imagine him asking a 7 year old boy where his parents were born, how old they were, how many children in the family? Or great-grandma who sometimes couldn't even remember her own name! If you do a comparison over several censuses, you might find the state of birth bouncing from state to state and ages all over the place. Until you have the actual date of birth, you have to do an averaging game; ages could vary up to 10 years from census to census. Some women got younger on every census, children's names varied from Charles to Charley to C. W. to Boy .... So, in your first step of documentation using the census, beware! Compare the census records carefully. A child not shown? Were they born in the right time frame to be listed? Had they died right after the census was taken? Were they the child of the head of household or a relative living with them? Chart them out - then start trying to fill in the missing gaps or correcting the wrong information from other sources. (c) Copyright 18 May 2000, Sandra K. Gorin, All Rights reserved. sgorin@glasgow-ky.com Col. Sandi Gorin, 205 Clements,Glasgow, KY 42141 (270) 651-9114 - E-fax (707)222-1210 - e-mail: sgorin@glasgow-ky.com Member: Glasgow-Barren Co Chamber of Commerce Publishing: http://members.delphi.com/gorin1/index.html Barren Co: http://www.rootsweb.com/~kybarren/ TIPS: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/Ky/Tips KYBIOS: http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/USA/Ky/Bios ARCHIVES: http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl ==== KYRESEARCH Mailing List ==== To unsubscribe, send message to KYRESEARCH-REQUEST@rootsweb.com and say unsubscribe in the message.