United States Census Records: a Snapshot of the Past

By Stephen Szabados

Census records are a snapshot of your family at the time the census was taken and contain a wealth of information that you can use to see the lives of your family. This book explains the information that the census records lists and how you can use the information in your family histories. The book also points to where these records can be found and also includes some search tips.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Szabados
• Release date: Aug 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393587354

Stephen Szabados

Steve Szabados grew up in Central Illinois and is a retired project manager living in the Chicago Suburbs. He received a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and a Masters in Business Administration from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. Steve Szabados is an author and lecturer on genealogy. He has been researching his ancestors since 2000 and has traced ancestors back to the 1600s in New England, Virgina, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and the 1730’s in Poland, Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia. He has given numerous presentations to genealogical groups and libraries in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. His mission is to share his passion for Family History with as many people as he can. He is a former board member of Polish Genealogical Society of America, and he is a genealogy volunteer at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library. Steve also is the genealogy columnist for the Polish American Journal.

Book preview

Census Records: Your next step after the shoebox papers.

After you have recorded oral history and personal documents, I recommend your next step in researching your family history should be finding and recording the information on census records. These records are a snapshot of your family at the time of the census. They contain a wealth of information that can identify some aspects of the lives of our family.

The U.S. Federal Census was mandated in 1787 by the U.S. Constitution. The purpose was to count the U.S population to determine the number of congressmen in the U.S. House of Representatives. The U.S. Constitution required that officials take the census in 1790 and every ten years after that. The census enumerator counted free males and their households. To be counted, the head of the household was free, paid taxes, and was eligible to vote. From 1790 through 1860, the enumerators recorded slaves, but census officials counted the slaves as three-fifths of a person towards the allocation of congressmen. The bureau of Indian Affairs also recorded the Indians who were living on treaty lands. However, Indians could not vote, and therefore the Indian census records were not used for congressional allocations. Officials used the Indian records were only for budgetary decisions.

In 1954, Congress passed Title 13, which restricts access by private and public entities to census records. This section mandates that all of the responses given by individuals to the questions in the U.S. census are to be held confidential for seventy-two years. The 1974 Privacy Act provided certain rights to individuals but also restricted the type of data that can be collected and limits the circumstances when the census bureau can disclose the information.

As an example, the government released the 1940 U.S. census records to the public on April 2, 2012. There was a fantastic demand to see these pages, and this demand caused a rush to index the names for online databases. Indexing allowed researchers to search the records by name. The National Archives will release the 1950 census to the public on April 1, 2022.

Overview - Census Records

Generally, I recommend that you start