Hands down, the most-common problem I’ve heard from genealogists throughout the years is “I can’t find my ancestor in the census.”
Though censuses might have simply missed a family, we can often find ancestors “hiding” in the census by using alternate search strategies. But when we do find our ancestors in censuses, should we assume all the information recorded there is true?
Experienced researchers know the answer to that question is no. One census record (indeed, one source of any kind) can, at most, be considered evidence. Without corroborating information in it with other sources, we can’t know a census’ accuracy.
Federal censuses are so common that we sometimes take them for granted. But no researcher is immune from being fooled into thinking they’re inherently correct. And census records are plagued by problems that bedevil even seasoned genealogists.
Read on for some of the most-pernicious ways that censuses can fool us—and how you can overcome them.
IMPORTANT SOURCE, IMPERFECT DETAILS
Population, non-population and state census records contain a rich variety of details about our ancestors’ lives. For many of us, census records form the foundation of genealogical research. And
