Issue 6.10
On television the other day, appeared a commercial about the upcoming 2010 census. My daughter-in-law asked me, what a census was. Every ten years since 1790 the United States has taken roll of its citizens as mandated by the Constitution. This year, we will continue that tradition by enumerating ourselves for the 23rd time.
One of the main purposes of the census is to monitor population and adjust governmental representation accordingly. The information you give during a census is kept confidential for 72 years. After that, it becomes public record. Why? Because of the Privacy Act and 72 years is about the average life span of a person.
Currently we can access census records up to 1930. In 2012, the 1940 census will be released. As you get involved in genealogy, you will definitely want to refer to census records. While they don’t give you a lot of information, you will find the people in family units from the 1850 census forward. You can track the migration of your relatives over time. It is fun to track the family every ten years as the progress through their lives. Census records used to be very difficult to search, but now due to the indexing and digitations of these records, you can easily find your family on census records.
Most of the time, census records can be very helpful. They are not perfect and will contain spelling mistakes made by the census taker plus any errors made in the indexing of records. The record is also only as good as the knowledge of the person who answered to door to the census taker. FamilySearch Indexing is making many census records available online for free at http://search.labs.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html and you can help index more of the census records by volunteering at http://indexing.familysearch.org/
Don’t get frustrated if you can’t find a census record for 1890. Most of those were destroyed in a Washington DC fire in 1921. So, the census is coming this year and don’t be afraid. He is not “big brother” coming to keep tabs on you. At the very least, he’s going to insure your future decedents can find you and might even help Utah get another Representative in Congress.
Shanna Jones is a professional genealogist. For additional information, Shanna can be reached at (435) 628-4900 or shannasjones@msn.com.