US State Census Records: Capture Your Family History Between Federal Censuses
The 1915 New Jersey State Census was recently released on FamilySearch. What a great opportunity to remind everyone about valuable U.S. state-level censuses taken between federal censuses.
Along with everyone who has U.S. roots, we love the federal census! We just wish there were more of them. Well, we can’t go back in time and make the federal government take more censuses. But we CAN turn to the many state census records.
- They fill in gaps between federal censuses, and particularly the long gap left by the missing 1890 census.
- They may not be closed to the public for as long.
- Different questions may have been asked than on the federal census.
For example, FamilySearch just announced that it’s added more than 2.7 million records from the 1915 New Jersey Census to its free online collections. “New Jersey records…was a popular settling point for millions of immigrants during the heyday of US immigration from 1892 to 1924,” states a press release. These records include “the names of each member of the household, location, gender, birth date (month and year) and birthplace.” New Jersey took censuses every 10 years from 1855 to 1915: FamilySearch has 1885 and 1905; 1895 is at Ancestry.
Actually, MOST U.S. states took some kind of census in the past. Ancestry’s wiki has a full list of U.S. colonial, state and territorial censuses. A lot of these are online at Ancestry and/or FamilySearch; a Google search of the state, year and “census” will lead you to these.
Resources
Census Records series in Episodes 9-11 of the free Family History Made Easy podcast
A Surprising Lesson on Using Census Records for Genealogy
1950 Census Substitutes: What to Use Until its Release Date
Thank you for sharing this post with others who may want to know more about state census records!
How 75-Year Old WPA Records May Help You Find an Ancestor
WPA Church Record Inventory Sheet, Eliam Baptist Church, FL. Click to view.
Got a research brick wall? A “national temp agency” created resources that may help you find your family history in obscure historical records.
During the Great Depression, so many Americans were out of work that the federal government launched the Works Progress Administration (later renamed the Works Projects Administration, thankfully keeping the “WPA” acronym intact).
I think of the WPA as a national temp agency that put thousands of residents to work on bookkeeping, building and conservation projects around the country. It’s the same concept I use when my kids want to earn some spending money: I give them a list of back-burnered chores: weed the flower beds, inventory the pantry, wash the walls.
The federal government did this on an enormous scale. Their “inventory the pantry” chores included jobs like indexing immigration and naturalization records and inventorying extant church records. Do you see where I’m going with this?
Let’s use the church records inventories as an example. In several states, WPA workers used a standardized form to capture data about church congregations. Included were:
- the church name(s) and address, pastor name, details about the building(s), race and size of congregation;
- a brief history of the church; and–even better–
- the description and location of existing records, like minute books, financial records, and registers of baptisms, marriages, members and deaths.
The original inventories, where they still exist, have been scattered. They were not collected and maintained by any national agency. But some were published and some are now online. For example:
- Florida: Florida Memory Project
- Pennsylvania: Ancestry
- New York City: New York Genealogical & Biographical Society
- South Carolina: University of South Carolina Libraries Digital Collections.
- Others are at state or university archives and libraries, like those for Ohio, Arkansas, Maryland and Mississippi.
Church records inventories are just one type of helpful resource compiled by WPA workers. Learn more about WPA records from leading genealogical expert Paula Stuart-Warren in Genealogy Gems Premium Podcast episode 2. (A Premium membership required to access–and it’s totally worth it! Click here to learn about its many benefits.)
Evernote for Family History: Organizing and Tagging Your Data
Recently Richard wrote in with great questions on using Evernote for family history. “Thank you for ‘reinvigorating’ my interest in my family history,” he says. “I watched [your Legacy Family Tree webinar] on Evernote twice and I am now a Premium user thanks to the video. I’m following many of your suggestions, but have a few questions.”
Here’s our Q & A on using Evernote for family history:
Q: “Creating a set of useful tags assumes that in the future you will want to extract data based upon those tags. Since in many cases you don’t have the data yet, and can’t know what you want to retrieve (kind of a “Back to the Future” scenario), do you have any suggestions on specific tags? Here are a couple I’m thinking of using and I’d appreciate your opinion: Census year — Birth year – Death year – Civil Records – Church Records.”
A: Yes, I provide a list on my Evernote for Genealogists quick reference guide (out of print) that follows along the lines you are already going (focusing on record types). I recommend keeping tag names simple so there is less clutter in the left hand column of Evernote. i.e. Birth, Census, Death, Immigration, etc. I also tend to have location tags such as states and/or counties in anticipation of opportunities to do research in those areas. If I’m going to make a trip to Randolph County, it would be convenient to access all related notes regardless of family or time frame with one click of a tag.
Originally I created notebooks for each major surname in my tree, but I recommend tags now. I reserve notebooks for high level topics and projects—particularly projects I anticipate wanting to work with others on. It’s very convenient to simply share a notebook. There are five Evernote videos that are part of Premium membership that go in to all the details. You’ll find the list here.
Q: “Do you tag individual surnames in your notes? What about generations, i.e., Grandparents — Great-Grandparents — Great-Great-Grandparents, etc.”
A: I have laid out my organizational strategy in the Genealogy Gems Premium Membership videos “Hard Drive Organization” and have since elaborated on how I apply that method to Evernote in several Premium podcast episodes.
Q: “I noted in your video you do not clip most of your family photos. Do you clip full census sheets?
A: Yes. Anything to do with my research!
Q: I use Family Tree Maker, and subscribe to Ancestry.com. Once you have compiled all these notes, what and how do you include them into your tree?”
A: I cover this in Premium episode 96.
As you can see, though I cover a lot of Evernote questions on my free Genealogy Gems website, a lot of his more detailed questions are addressed in members-only Premium content. Learn more about Genealogy Gems Premium membership here: all the great online videos and Premium podcast episodes you’ll be able to access for a full YEAR for less than the price of attending a single day at a genealogy conference!
Just interested in Evernote right now? Check out this post:
How to Get Started in Evernote, and the Ultimate Evernote Education