Familysearch has all the censuses indexed (they don't have all of the images easily available) but at least that is another index. Yes, Ancestry Library Edition is less cluttered than ancestry.com. I'm a librarian by trade, as well as a personal subscriber, so I'm familiar with both. ProQuest is the library vendor who provides Ancestry Library Edition to libraries as well as other genealogy collections like Heritage Quest (which also has the censuses and may be available to you from home). ProQuest also has some very nice and helpful how to information in their "Lib Guides". The one covers Ancestry and under the last tab (other information) are various PDF formatted items, including a comparison of ALE and ancestry.com. http://proquest.libguides.com/content.php?pid=322379&sid=2666575 Hope this helps, Megan in La Crosse, WI > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2014 02:17:21 -0700 > From: velma spring <[email protected]> > Subject: [ROOTS-L] Ancestry > To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> > Message-ID: <[email protected]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > In answer to not having ancestry, you might want to try you local library. Mine has the library edition of Ancestry. It has only a few things but it does have all the census records. Even when I have Ancestry I prefer that web site. They have all of the census records and I find them easier to use. The library even let's me print them for free. You might want to try other spellings. Every census before 1900 was spelled differently For my father's ancestors and the name wasn't recognizable. This was probably because they were German and had not yet learned the language. > > Velma > > Sent from my iPad > > >