Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Census Reports

I decided to view the census backwards going from 1930 back as far as I could go. I was able to go back to 1900's. Sometimes even with all the technology available in today's world I still needed paper and pencil to write down each family I found. And then I was able to compare each census year side by side to detect if there were any discrepancies or anomalies.

My first observation was that it was near impossible to detect a child's death if they were born and died between census. This is where oral history is extremely important. Oral history also helped out when there were twins involved and one did not survive.

Another problem is when people fell off the census reports. This occurred if they got married and moved away or worst if they were single and such moved away. Very rarely did I see one person living by themselves on the Census reports. I have four people that I need to track down who disappeared from the 1930's census but had been on the 1920's census. One lady I know married but I do not know her husband's last name and where they moved to. All her sisters and brothers had stayed in the same area and therefore you saw them on the next census with their husbands. The other three were men who stayed single for the rest of their lives but I don't know where they were living in the 1930's.

All interesting stuff and a lot of detective work.

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