I can no longer find the US federal census records
What am I missing?
Thanks,
Michael
Answers
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Is there any specific year that's missing? Or a specific state, maybe? I've been opening a few and they've all worked fine.
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I can't even find where to go to search. However, it seems that I was looking for a county that had not yet been created. :( I'll try again.
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I can no longer access the 1870 US Federal census. All the other years are fine. I am getting a "No Results Found" message. Here is the URL. Have they been removed or is it another glitch? Lots of those lately.
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I also cannot find where to search for the 1930 Federal Census. Can someone please steer me in the right direction. I cannot find any Censuses.
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If any of you have Ancestry accounts, I would recommend using Ancestry to do searches in the US federal censuses. First, all censes are linked right on your home page. Second, when you are browsing - rather than searching - only states, counties and territories that existed at the time will appear in the drop-down filter list. Thirdly, there is a fantastic feature by which you can expand a search from a specific county to all counties surrounding that county. That is not an easy feat to do in your head. You can also expand your search from a specific state to all states surrounding that state.
Finally, the search results have an icon which lets you know someone has edited the information and you can look at it.
Use Ancestry.
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There are two ways that I find the census records on FamilySearch. The first is to go to Search > Records. On the bottom left of the page under Find a Collection type 'United States Census.' This brings up a list of the census records by year.
Another way to access them is by going to the Wiki page United States Census.
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Thanks, Ashlee. I've used that interface a number of times but could never figure out the right combination of words. It's really, really picky. This is such a common need for genealogists that FS should make access to the US census perfectly clear.
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@Michael-Cooley said:
"… could never figure out the right combination of words. It's really, really picky. This is such a common need for genealogists that FS should make access to the US census perfectly clear."
Tongue in cheek - it's only "such a common need" for genealogists in a certain country 😉
More seriously, it is indeed picky - I just tried the "Find a Collection" option and if I typed "united states cen" then the correct Federal Censuses appear quite easily. However, if I guess at there being an extra comma in there and type "united states, cen", then I don't see the Federal Censuses at all.
If I guess at "US census" then the Federal Censuses are way, way down the list. Conversely, the "Albania, Census, 1930" pops up quite quickly, which might be thought a puzzlement.
I would suggest that some more flexible filtering is needed.
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My favorite way to find someone in a census is to start by just putting in a surname or sometimes a surname with wild cards. I can always add a given name later if I need to, but I throw out a big net. Then, using the filters across the top, I open up "Residence" and pick the year. Then I can start narrowing down the residence place, also using the horizontal filters on top. Using the top filters is a much cleaner search—you get only the people with that surname, in that year, in that county. Alternatively, you could also use the "type" filter in the search criteria to narrow it down to only censuses. We all know that searching on FamilySearch is a little different than searching on Ancestry. Ancestry invites it's users to fill in a lot of boxes, but with FamilySearch you need to get in the habit of casting a big net.
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@SerraNola, keep in mind, though, that using FS's place fields — either as search inputs or as filters — presupposes that the index has the place right.
Unfortunately, due to the autostandardization mess, you cannot trust that any index anywhere on FS has any of the places right.
The extensive patching and fixing that has been done in the past five years means that place fields on FS are now like DNA-based "ethnicity" estimates: they're generally reliable for identifying the correct continent. (Though not always, still: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2HJ-JPHX.) For anything below the continent level, the index can be a starting point, but everything it says — both negative and positive — needs to be verified.
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@Julia Szent-Györgyi I stand by the fact that you catch more fish with a big net going from pond to pond, but I get your point. I would definitely not be searching for Chicago burials in Zambia!
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