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Computers & Genealogy - Article #15
U.S. Census Lookups
The folks who manage this page urge you to bookmark this page and share its URL (website address) with your friends and fellow researchers. It was begun on the 8th of May, 1998, and already has been visited by almost 8,000 volunteers and researchers. There are volunteers for 37 states, at present, and they are asking for volunteers in the others. At the rate the page is growing, the other 13 states will be added soon and will eventually benefit to every county in the U.S.
Information from the Census is available for the years 1790, 1800, 1810, 1820, 1830, 1840, 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880, 1890, 1900, 1910, 1920. It is not available for subsequent years as many of those people are still living. Also in the early years, our nation only included the 13 original States. Consequently, there's no 1810 Census for Arizona, etc.
You can find this site at:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~uslookup/
When you arrive at the site, you will see a table showing the names of all the states in alphabetical order. Those states whose names are underlined have volunteers or searchable indexes available. To access these resources, you simply click on an underlined state. On the state page, you'll see another table, this one showing all counties and census years for which there are volunteers. You simply choose the county and year from the table, then click on the Volunteer's name next to your desired county/year.
When you do, an e-mail form will pop up on your screen, pre-addressed to the volunteer whose name you clicked. On the e-mail form's "Subject" line, enter the word "CENSUS", and the names of the state, county and year you're requesting a look-up for. Then in the Body of the form (the part where you type your actual message), enter the name of the family you seek. Give approximate date of birth and/or death if possible. Limit your request to 2 people per request so as not to overwork the volunteers.
Also, only place your request to ONE volunteer. Some people post their requests to several volunteers, because they think it gives them a better chance of getting the information. I strongly discourage this practice. The people who do this sort of work are volunteers and their time is as valuable as anyone else's. When you ask several to look up one piece of information, you cause them to spend their valuable time doing work that is completely useless because someone else is already looking it up. It's a waste of valuable time that could be spent looking up other information. Instead, write to ONE volunteer and then be patient. If you haven't heard anything in a week or two, write them again.
Don't be pushy; remember they are doing this on their own time and they have lives to lead, as well. Most volunteers will help you relatively quickly (i.e. within a couple of weeks of your request). If you get no positive response, in another week or two, or if they seem reluctant or overburdened, check to see if there's another volunteer for that county/year. If there is, and if you feel that you're getting nowhere with the one you wrote to first, write to that first volunteer and tell them that you feel they may be too busy or that you feel you need to get the information more quickly than they may have time for. Let them know that you're seeking the information elsewhere. Be nice about it. They may very well just not have enough time to help you. I know (who better?) what it's like to volunteer for a number of efforts with the best of intentions and then find that it's hard to fulfill them all. We all know that to one degree or another. Be merciful.
Copies of what the original census forms looked like and the questions that were asked can be found at the beginning of most of the posted indexes. Additional sample census forms can be found at:
http://www.familytreemaker.com/00000062.html
For subsequent forms, increase the number gradually to 00000086.
Naturally enough, the site welcomes volunteers. If you have access to a census and would be willing to do look-ups for your fellow researchers, or have one already on-line, we all would be most grateful if you would list it here.
If you are now thinking that you just don't have time to do an occasional look-up like this or if you fear being inundated with requests, let me assure you that you are always free to turn down any request that you feel is too much of a burden or which you don't have time for. Or you can refer such requests to another Census Help List member who can better help the person making the request.
I want to gently remind you that, like so many other wonderful resources available to researchers like ourselves, this network depends on our willingness to give a little of our time and knowledge so that when WE need something from someone far away, it's there for us.
Directions and their e-mail address can be found at the bottom of the web page. I would urge you to become a volunteer; people helping people is what make the world of genealogy go 'round!!
Institutional and individual libraries often have many unique and special items in their collections. These institutions can include public libraries, private libraries, private collections, universities, colleges, historical societies, genealogical societies and other institutions.
The items they hold often include church records, family bibles, genealogical scrapbooks, family papers, diaries, letters and correspondence, maps, survey documents, manuscripts, journals, photographs, posters, plans, records and publications of organizations such as charities, political groups and many other interesting and significant items.
The problem with trying to find them is that you don't know what is available at these institutions, nor can you tell where they are. Some libraries and other institutions are online, but not very many and few of those list all of their holdings.
Imagine that you are looking for journals or diaries of an ancestor who came to Michigan in 1915. There are over 70 counties in Michigan, and there may be many libraries in each county. In addition, there are state libraries, city libraries, college and university libraries and private collections in the hands of individuals, societies and so on. Searching all of these possible sources, one at a time, would be a major effort. For this reason, librarians have come up with a better way; the union catalog.
What is a Union Catalog?
So, some years ago, the Library of Congress surveyed hundreds and hundreds of these collections, all over the country, and published a multi-volume index, printed and bound into books which are available at your local library. But that is an imperfect solution, as well, since you have to go through the library to look it up and, since there are many, many volumes in the union index, it's cumbersome to do look-ups.
Recently, however, the Library of Congress has posted the entire index has been posted on the world wide web, so you can search ALL of these archives by typing your names, locations or other query criteria into the NUCMC Search Page. You can find that page at:
http://lcweb.loc.gov/coll/nucmc/nucmc.html
When you get there, you'll find the following options:
In the Easy Search Form, you can enter the term you want to look for. This can be a surname, the name of a locality or the name or description of any word connected with the kind of document you seek. The search page then looks through the name, title, and subject field of every document or archive included in the NUCMC catalog.
This wonderful search tool allows you to find valuable documents connected with the people and places you are researching. You can search for family bibles, diaries, journals and other documents. You can also search for documents related to the places and place names connected with your ancestors. You can search the companies they worked for, the associations, clubs, societies and churches they belonged to and much, much more.
When you see an entry you're interested in, press the "More on this Record" label at the bottom of the listing and the page will display much valuable information about the listing, including the location of the document, the name of the institution holding it and contact information that you can use to contact that institution. If the institution has no name and address information, write down its "RLIN" code.
There are a couple of cautionary notes to remember:
There are a number of other links on this page that will take you to other related sites, including those dealing with such topics as "Library of Congress resources" (finding aids and information about reading rooms, holdings, products, and services of other parts of the Library of particular interest to the archival and manuscript community), "Archival and Manuscript Repositories in the United States" (links to the resources of archives and manuscript repositories other than the Library of Congress), "Ready, net, go!" (information on sites of archival interest), "Archival education" (information about library schools and similar topics), "Archival societies" and much more.
Try these sites, I'm sure you'll find them both useful and informative.
P.S. - Our "Computers & The Internet" class went so well that we are having FOUR more, on Saturday, February 13th, 1999, and Saturday, February 20th, 1999. Like the first class, they will be from 9:00am to 12:00pm, though I will stay afterward and cover more material if the opportunity and the interest are there. There will be an internet-connected computer for every student. The tuition will be $8.00, all of which will pay for materials or be contributed to the fund for the Society's computer system. Bring a pen and paper and be prepared for a lot of fun!! Those of you who attended the first class know how enjoyable it was. If you want to take it again, as a refresher, don't hesitate; that's why we're doing several sessions. We will hold more classes if the enrollment warrants.
You may remember that, earlier this year, over a period of four months, we covered many census resources, available on the Internet, both abroad and in the U.S. I had not planned on further covering the census for awhile yet. The last couple of articles have covered databases and database services. There are many more to cover, but I ran across a wonderful source of census information that I found irresistible.
I received a tip from a subscriber to the Bovee e-mail list, pointing me to a helplist service specifically for US census look-ups. The site is primarily a meeting place, where researchers can meet with volunteers who are willing to look up information in copies which they may have of the Federal Census. There are also complete census indexes that you can access through this page.
Census Forms
National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections
One of my faithful readers recently advised me of a very useful and unusual site known as the Library of Congress' "National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections" (also known as NUCMC), which has been put on the world wide web. There has been a print version of this resource for many years, but now that it's on the web.
Essentially, a union catalog is a catalog of the holdings of multiple libraries, archives, collections or other repositories. A union catalog can be used to find items that may be held by any one of the several (or many) institutions whose holdings are included in the union catalog. Since the catalog lists individual items, you can search for them. This gives you enormous power, because you can search the catalog and find any item in any constituent institution.
© 1998 by Byron C. Bray. This, and all "Computers and Genealogy" articles, are copyright Byron C. Bray and may be copied for personal use but may NOT be reprinted without the permission of the author. Contact: byron.bray@cmug.com