Dear Folks, Yesterday when Sandy and I were talking each other's ears off about genealogy, the subject of the 1800-1840 census came up. It was so great to talk about such things with Sandy because she's been researching her family for over 20 years and I didn't need to teach her the basics. Especially the value of the 1800-1840 census. A number of years ago when my sister Norma and I were checking out every resouce we could find about our ancestors we dilligently copied down the details of those census years but since they named only the head of the household but not the names of those in the household, they didn't tell us much. But the more that I studied the census, the more I came up with the brilliant idea of figuring out the years of birth of the members of the household. For exemple, with the 1800 census if a male was listed under the age of 10 years old that meant he was born between 1791 to 1800. If age 10-16, he was born 1785-1790, etc. Note, those are my estimates. That's when the value of those census became one of our very important sources. For about 30 years since then I've sucessfully placed ancestors in a family by following that family through those census and then Bingo!, there he was by name on the 1850 census. Yes, there's a lot of GOOD information in the 1800-1840 census! vee