Personal Life Media

Transcript

As you’ll recall, in our last episode we talked about the U.S. Federal Census Records and started with searching the 1930 census.  I hope you gave that a try, either by signing up for a free trial at Ancestry.com, or using Ancestry for free at your local library or Family History Center. 

In that episode I looked up my great grandfather Charles Allen Burkett, and we found him in 1930 living at 2044 South American St., in Stockton, California with his wife Ellen, their three daughters and a grandson.

As I continue to work back in time and I search for this train conductor and his family in the 1920 census.  I found them living in Portola, Plumas Co, CA.  And being earlier in Charles’ career, I found him working as a brakeman for the Tidewater Southern Railroad.  This time the last name is spelled BURKETT, and my grandfather, also Charles A. Burkett, was age 13 and living in the household. 

And so we continue to research backwards…

Since great grandpa Charles was 36 years old in 1920 I will be looking for him as a man of 26.  And since we determined when he and Ellen probably married – around 1902 – based on the information we found in the 1930 census saying Charles was 22 at the time they married, we would expect to find him living with his wife and some of the children in 1910. 

We’ll use the same search strategy as we did last episode.  We’ll enter BUR* in the Last Name Field to pull names into our results that might be spelled a little differently, and we’ll include Charle’s approximate birth year and place.  BUR * pays off because sure enough they are back to spelling the surname BURKETTE in 1910.  And this time they are living in San Francisco.  Charles is listed as C. Allen, and his wife Ellen has actually been mis-represented by the census taker as Helen.  You should expect to find those kinds of variations. 

We know Helen in really Ellen, and the head of the household is Charles Allen even though he’s listed as C. Allen.  And that makes sense because my grandpa was known as Al and so it’s logical that his father also went by Al, or Allen.

In the 1910 census you’ll find some interesting elaboration on the marriage of your ancestors. 
1910 Census Form:  http://www.ancestry.com/save/charts/1910.pdf

You will often find in the Married Column M1 or M2, etc. indicating how many marriages they had.   And again you’ll find either their age at the time of their first marriage, or a question about how many years they’ve been married.   Either way we can calculate the year they married.

The next column is new as well, and can prove very helpful to our research.  The wife is asked how many children if any that she has, and then in the next column, how many of those children were still living?  What an interesting question to ask!  The answer could certainly shed light on whether there were other siblings who did not survive that we never knew about.

After locating the 1910 census again you want to determine how old the person you are looking for should be and you best guesses on where you might locate them in 1900.  And don’t give up if you don’t find them the first couple of time through.  Keep switching up the information that you are searching on, and use the SEARCH TIPS link that you’ll find in the Ancestry search box. 

And in addition to using the asterisk to represent up to 6 letters, you can also a question mark in place of letter that you’re not quite sure about.  For example, I have occasionally found ELLEN spelled ELLIN in records, so I might try ELL?N in my search. 

Another terrific set of questions you’ll find on the 1900 census through the 1930 census have to do with immigration and citizenship.  Immigration was a booming business in the early 20th century, and the government wanted to get a better handle on immigration and how many of those immigrants were getting naturalized.  So you’ll find columns for Year of Immigration, and whether the immigrant was still an alien or had been naturalized.  And in some cases you will find the year of naturalization.  Forms can vary slightly from state to state and certainly from year to year. But this is invaluable information when you’re researching immigrant ancestors!

We’ve enjoyed some good success in working backward to the 1900 census and we’ve found lots of great info.  And many of the innovations that led to all that great information can find it’s origins in the 1890 census, including a new punch card tabulation technique for counting the census created by Herman Hollerith. 

Using Hollerith's system, the rough population count for 1890 of over 62 million people was completed in just six weeks!  Hollerith's system shaved years of effort off of the tabulation process and saved the US taxpayer approximately $5 million compared to previous censuses. 

This is all great news, right?  Unfortunately, we’re in for hard times as we enter into the 19th century.  In fact, I can almost guarantee that you aren’t even going to find any census records in the 1890 census.  

In 1896 a fire occurred which damaged the mortality, poverty and handicap special schedules of the 1890 census, and the remains were destroyed by order of the Dept of Interior.  The good news was that the original 1890 census, the only remaining copy of the population schedules was still available, and was moved in to a file room in the basement of the Commerce Building.  

So when, on January 10, 1921 a mysterious fire broke out in the basement, the building was saved by the Washington DC fire department that strove to contain the fire to the basement so as to prevent complete destruction of the building.  However, it wasn’t flames that destroyed those census papers stored on the wood shelves, but rather the at least twenty fire hoses spewing water into that basement!

When it was all over, it was estimated that 25% of the 1890 schedules had been destroyed by fire, which doesn’t sound that bad, right?  However, an estimated 50% of the 1890 census was damaged by the smoke, and worse yet, the water.  The small remains of the 1890 schedules, including just 6000 of the 62 million people counted, were moved out of the basement of the Commerce Building and into temporary storage.

The good news is that this disaster helped to push through the calls for a permanent National Archives to be built, which all genealogists benefit from today.

So what happened to the remnants of the 1890 census?  They were destroyed by government order by the mid 1930s, as part of routine record retention and destruction guidelines at the time.

But genealogists are a tough and persistent bunch and there have been heroic efforts to compile alternative records from that same 1890 time period to serve as an alternative to the lost 1890 census. 

1890 SUBSTITUTE DATABASE at ANCESTRY:
http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/census/1890sub/main.htm

So even though we’ve come up against some tough challenges such as the destruction of the 1890 census, it should only make our resolve stronger to find another way around the roadblock, and to push forward with our quest to climb our family tree.

Population schedules that contain the names of our ancestors are not the only kind of enumerations conducted as part of the U.S. Federal Census.  My guest in today’s episode, Curt Witcher from the famous Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana tells us more about some of the lesser known enumerations that can be of tremendous value to us in our search.