Secrets of the Census, Part 1

American genealogists take for granted that we have access to our census records. We understand there are privacy limits that keep us from seeing more recent censuses, but we also enjoy almost unlimited access to all of them from the first in 1790 to the most recently released, 1950. Yes, we know that some early censuses are missing, and most of us have heard the sad story about the loss of nearly all of the 1890 census due to the effects of a fire. Those of us who remember the days of cranking microfilm or plowing through Soundex cards are luxuriating in having the census enumerations digitized and forgiving of spelling mistakes in the online indexes. We now can breeze through dozens of pages, building our families with comparative ease. But, in our eagerness to collect census information, do we spend enough time really looking at what is on all those forms? We'll take a closer look at the secrets of the census in the next few weeks, beginning with the earliest and working our way forward in time.

If Only Geographic Borders Didn't Change!

It certainly makes it easier to do genealogy if your family lived in the same place for hundreds of years, doesn’t it? Well, maybe. The reality is that over time, borders are always changing. As America became more settled by non-native people, the borders of cities, counties, colonies, and then states were forever shifting. In Europe, centuries of disputes over who ruled what and where meant that stability was the exception and not the norm. What do movable boundaries mean for those of us trying to research our families?