The United States The United States CensusCensusLynda Kellam

Constitutional Constitutional MandateMandateArticle 1, Section 2 of the United States Constitution:

“Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers ... The actual Enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct.”

Key considerationsKey considerations

Questions have changed from census to census

Geographies have changed because of growth and expansion

1860 Census Enumeration form

(From IPUMS: http://usa.ipums.org/usa/voliii/tEnumForm.shtml)

Schedule 1. Free Inhabitants in _________, in the County of ________, State of _________, enumerated by me, on the _____ day of ___________, 1860.___________________, Ass’t. Marshal.1. Dwelling houses and number in order of visitation. 2. Families numbered in the order of visitation. 3. The name of every person whose usual place of abode on the 1st day of June, 1860, was in this family.     Description: 4. Age. 5. Sex. 6. Color – White, black, or mulatto. 7. Profession, occupation, or trade of each person, male or female, over 15 years of age.     Value of real estate owned: 8. Value of real estate. 9. Value of personal estate. 10. Place of birth, naming the state, territory, or country. 11. Married within the year. 12. Attended school within the year. 13. Persons over 20 years of age who can not read and write. 14. Whether deaf and dumb, blind, insane, idiotic, pauper or convict.     Schedule 2. Slave Inhabitants in _________, in the County of ________, State of _________, enumerated by me, on the _____ day of ___________, 1860.___________________, Ass’t. Marshal.1. Names of slave owners. 2. Number of slaves.     Description:3. Age. 4. Sex. 5. Color. 6. Fugitives from the state. 7. Number manumitted. 8. Deaf and dumb, blind, insane, or idiotic. 9. Number of slave houses.

1860 Census Questions (From IPUMS: http://usa.ipums.org/usa/voliii/tEnumForm.shtml)

2000 Census Long Form

(1 page of 11)

(From IPUMS: http://usa.ipums.org/usa/voliii/tEnumForm.shtml

)

From MIT Libraries. See http://libraries.mit.edu/guides/types/census/geography.html for full descriptions of geographies

Census SchedulesCensus SchedulesBy law individual-level census information must be confidential for 72 years

Aggregate statistics are available, but not an individual’s answers

On April 1, 2012, the 1940 Census individual-level information will be available to researchers

We have 1790-1930 individual-level information available. (Most of 1890 was destroyed in a fire.)

Schedule for 1920 Census

- Rutherford,

NC

Lynda’s great great grandparent

?

Soundex Soundex IndexingSystemIndexingSystem

In past, only access to individual records was microfilm & using Soundex Indexing System (http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/census/soundex.html)

Created by FDR and the WPA

Early enumerators were spelling surnames phonetically therefore no consistency (Smith-Smythe-Smyth)

Surnames are given a numeric value

Once you locate an individual in Soundex can then go to census microfilm.

Other sources of Other sources of census recordscensus records

Now some digitization efforts and keyword searching

HeritageQuest: available through UNCG (https://library.uncg.edu/dbs/auth/go.asp?vdbID=392)

Ancestry.com: available through Greensboro Public(http://www.ancestry.com/)

Historical Census Historical Census StatisticsStatistics

University of Virginia’s Historical Census Browser (http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/)

Statistical Abstracts of the United States (http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/statab.html)

Print copies (1790 - 2000) in the Reference Department