submitted by equilla@psnw.com
Here are some very good census ideas for census research. This is was for folks researching people of Polish origin, but it is very applicable to ANY research.
Census, Some Good Advice submitted by equilla@psnw.com
Here are some very good census ideas for census research. This is was for folks researching people of Polish origin, but it is very applicable to ANY research.
1. If you are using transcribed records, the transcriber may have misread the original handwriting. "L" and "S"; "T", "F", and "J"; "I" and "J"; "K" and "R" are often confused in transcriptions of nineteenth/early twentieth century census records. Ignore vowels entirely--they look too much alike in script.
2. Many names are spelled phonetically--so look at logical substitutions: "C" = "K"; "S" = "C"; "Ch" = "Sh" = "Sch", etc. It helps if you are know the language backgrounds of the census taker and the household-- phonetic spellings might crop up that make sense in their languages (for example, an Irish census taker and a Polish household) but not in English. Ignore vowels entirely--their pronunciation varies widely by region in the U.S. and between languages.
3. Do not assume that the head of the household gave the information. In the 1900 census, three years after my mother's father's father brought his family over, their 14-year-old daughter had to answer the census questions because she spoke English the best. The parents were listed as illiterate--they were illiterate in English but literate in Polish. My mother's father, Kazimierz, was listed as Kelsey, because the Irish census taker apparently could not conceive of or attempt to phonetically spell the real name.
4. People were supposed to give their birth dates as of the census date. Some census takers didn't understand this or didn't explain it; most people just aren't that good at pop quizzes in math. Most ages are accurate to within 2 years for 1850-1870. The farther back you go in time and the older the person, the accuracy range expands to about 10 years--birthdays just weren't as big a deal as they are today.
5. Some census takers didn't understand or explain well that "Last name first, first name last rule" means "Last name-comma-first name-middle name or initial" and recorded the data as "Last name-middle name-first name or initial", so if you find the right surname but a family with totally different "first names" check to cross-check the "middle initial" to see if it matches with the "first name" known from other records. Many Polish people did not have middle names until recently, but thought this might help someone searching other lines.
6. Names that could be either a first name or a last name might be transposed, so the whole family could be listed under the first name of the head of household as its surname.
7. People who were born in one place and were taken to another place as infants or young children probably assumed that they were born where they grew up--but later in life were corrected by parents or older siblings or else were asked the question in such a way that they thought they were being asked where they were from now and not originally.
8. The census taker was supposed to ask who had lived in the household at least 6 months as of the census date. Again--a pop math quiz that many people would flunk. People didn't watch the clock or calendar or have to deal with employee taxes the way we do now for the census years available, so there are estimating errrors--some people will be duplicated, some will be missed.
9. When dealing with records of ancestors of Polish origin, depending on the town where they are from and the time periods of their birth/baptism date, census year, etc. remember that the unofficial motto of Central and Eastern Europe is "We change borders yearly!" Depending on where they were from and when the following big region places could be listed as place of origin and/or be the location of the place today: Poland, Austria, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Czechoslovakia, Pommern, Pomerania, Prussia, Germany, etc. You really, really have to educate yourself about the historical/political geography of Poland to be able to do research on ancestors of Polish ethnicity.
Hope this is helpful to someone. I am not trying to say that census records are useless, because they are very useful, but take any information with a grain of salt; don't expect exact matches of dates, places, names; and if you don't find relatives where they said they are, look harder for alternative name spellings, or if near a boundary in the next county over.
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