The first Federal Population Census in the United States was taken in 1790, and a census has been taken every ten years since. However, data from recent censuses are not available after 1940 because of a 72-year restriction on access to the Census.
Please note: Most of the 1890 Census was destroyed in a Department of Commerce fire in 1921, though partial records are available for some states. For more information, see the National Archives guide to the 1890 Census.
From 1850 to 1940, details are provided for all individuals in each household. Details may include:
Not all of this information is available in every census. Before the 1850 Census, few of these details were recorded. From 1790 to 1840, only the head of household is listed by name; other household members are merely counted in selected age groups.
Searching census records can begin with as little information as:
If possible, it is better to have more information to narrow your search down when presented with multiple results. For example, dates of birth or death, middle names/initials, or the specific city, town, or county in which someone lived.
The TriCollege Libraries maintain an institutional subscription to Ancestry.com, which grants researchers access to the U.S. Census as well as many other digitized public records. See below for a detailed tutorial on using Ancestry.com to search the Census.
This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new windowThis guide will walk you through using Ancestry.com to find a specific person in the Census.
When you first open Ancestry.com, the top right corner of your screen should say "Bryn Mawr College", signifying that you're logged into the institutional subscription to Ancestry Library. Make sure you're accessing the website via the library website and are connected to the college wifi to ensure you're logged in.
To search for a specific person, click on the search button located in top left menu, next to Home, and then select "Census and Voter Lists." The page you come to will look like this. Input as much information as you have. The more information, the easier it will be to locate the exact person you are searching for. Location is particularly important when searching.
It's also important to note that names, ages, birthplaces, and other information might not be 100% correct in each census. Accuracy depends on the knowledge of the person providing the information. For example, names may be spelled differently than you'd expect. The enumerator may have written the name down according to his or her idea of how the name was spelled. The enumerator may not have asked how the name was spelled, and the family member answering the questions may not have been able to spell their own name. Some people are listed by initials or by abbreviations, such as “Thos.” for “Thomas.”
This is an example of results for a search for Bessie King, using only her first and last names. With 60,000 search results, even if all the records were relevant, we wouldn't be able to read them all.
To increase the relevancy of these results, you can either apply filters using the options on the left hand side of the screen, or add additional information about the person you're looking for by clicking "Edit your search". Adding birth and death dates, baptism dates, family members, marriage or divorce dates, locations of these events, or other information will help refine the search.
Here, we will add location and family data to focus our results.
Once we apply these parameters, the number of search results may not change, but the relevancy does. You can view more information about the record by hovering over the title.
The first record on the page is the Bessie King we're looking for, so we're going to click through to get a closer look at the record.
When you click on a record, you can see the information from the record, fully transcribed, a preview of the original document, the citation for the document, and suggestions for other similar records. Clicking on "Source" beside "Detail" will give you citation information for the original Census document pictured here. You can also look at the records of other family members from the same Census document by clicking on their names.
Clicking on the document preview takes you to a digitized copy of the original Census. Although information about Bessie King and her immediate family members has been transcribed, you may still be able to glean additional information from the original record.
Ancestry.com provides transcriptions of the categories included in each census and explanations of abbreviations. Hovering over a piece of text will pull up the transcription for the Census itself.
In this record, we can in fact get more information from the original Census than was described in the Ancestry.com record. Here we can see that the King family, in 1880, employed three live-in domestic laborers. You can also use this sheet or the "Neighbors: View others on page" to learn more about the neighborhood a person lived in and what their surroundings might have been like.
Don't rely solely on "suggested records" for documentation of an individual in the Census. You can always refine your search and keep looking. Try searching instead for a close relative or someone else who might have lived in the same community as them. You may find the person you're looking for by looking into the people around them. This is especially true in the Bryn Mawr College community, as students and many domestic laborers, as well as some faculty and staff, lived on campus.
