U.S. Census

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To Learn More about the U.S. Census in Kentucky

To learn about the history of the U.S. Censuses taken for Kentucky and how to use them, the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives maintains an active web page entitled A Guide to Interpreting Kentucky's Census Records.

"Census Day"

Thru the Years

Soundex/Miracode -

"Cheat Sheet"

As more and more of the U.S. Census images are digitized, transcribed, recorded, and indexed, the following information will become less and less relevant.  Although I have used the soundexes quite often, I have never bothered to memorized the coding used to make up the code to locate a roll of

Last names are coded according to the following rules:

The letters a, e, i, o, u, w, h, and y are not coded.  When two letters with the same code appear together, only code them one time.  The first letter of the code is always the first letter of the last name, followed by three numbers.  Use zeros to complete the three spaces if you don't have enough numbers.

Name:  __________

Code:  __ __ __ __

See Soundex Reference Guide (Genealogy 929.11 S842s) for more information.

SOURCE:  A "Cheat Sheet" provided by the Indiana State Library, Genealogy Division.

"Motherhood Statistics"

I suppose everyone must find a certain features of the U.S. Censuses more intriguing than others.  But my favorite statistics are to be found in the 1900 & 1910 U.S. Censuses, and they are the statistics recorded regarding how many children a woman had given birth to, and how many were still living at the time of her enumeration.

Sometimes large portions of whole families can be lost or harder to find due to the great void between the 1880 & 1900 U.S. Censuses caused by the destruction of most of the 1890 enumeration schedules.  If a couple married in the 1870s and had children, those children can virtually disappear by the time they can be counted as adults of the 1900 U.S. Census, and that is assuming they stayed in the same county or region.  If a couple moved and if the couple's earliest children were daughters, it can be even more difficult to find out if they died or were married before 1900.  And so the statistics regarding how many children were born to a woman and how many were still living can be a great "heads-up" in telling you to be on the lookout in other genealogical records for children who don't appear with or near their parents in 1900 or who were born after 1880 and who died or were married before 1900.  The 1910 U.S. Census schedules contain the same information, only ten years later, and these statistics can be used in the same way, only for a smaller timespan, and they can help corroborate the 1900 enumeration's "motherhood statistics."  They have helped me many a time, but be aware, that there are problems with these numbers like all others recorded in the U.S. Census.  If a woman married several times, the number recorded may refer to children by all her marriages, or just those of her latest.  And like all enumerations, the numbers are only as good as the knowledge of the person who answered the door on "Census Day."

The "Last-Known-To-Be-Living Date"

One of the first things one tries to do as a genealogist is fill in those blanks for birth and death dates, but they aren't as forthcoming as one thinks they should always be. If one is building a genealogy of a collateral line, a death date may be just as hard as a birth date is to find in working backwards in time, in researching you own ancestors, for example.

Soon after beginning my research, I began to realize that another date became just as important as birth and death dates in research, and that is what I call the "last-known-to-be-living date." This is the date of the most recent document that you can attribute to a person you are researching, before you can accurately determine when they died. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it is usually the date of the U.S. census enumerations, but it can be the date on which somebody was listed as the beneficiary of a will or perhaps when they were mentioned as a survivor in a relative's obituary. Just about every type of document of interest to a genealogist can be used as a source for this date.

One thing I do when filling out any family group sheet, whether using a paper form, a word processor, a genealogy program (which may have to be tweaked a little to follow my suggestion) is to insert a row of blanks and numbers after the blank for their birth date that looks like this:

"(__/50; __/60; __/70; __/80; __/1900; __/10; __/20; __/30)"

As I find the person in the census I fill in each blank with the age that was recorded for each census year. If I find the person was 18 in 1880, I fill in the blank to look like this: "18/80" and then I know they were last alive on June 1, 1880, the Census Day of that enumeration. It also serves as a checklist to use in finding and building a complete U.S. census record for each individual I am researching.

As I fill in the blanks I have a figure with which to compare the accuracy of any future discoveries regarding a date of birth, and I also have a "last-known-to-be-living" checklist using the U.S. census.

Having a "last-known-to-be-living date" has also helped me to eliminate many possible false matches in looking for an individual's date of death, especially in communities where there were several with the same name and age.

Before you have that final answer (Pun sorta intended!), having a "last-known-to-be-living date" on hand can be very helpful on tracking down that sometimes elusive date of death for your genealogy charts.

When the U.S. Census Knocked, Vanity Sometimes Answered

My great-great-grandmother, Emma Clarinton Stewart (1847-1914), daughter of Harrison County native Benoni Stewart and Williamstown, Ky. native Sarah Tully, spent her whole life in Grant & Boone Counties, Kentucky, as well as in Cincinnati, across the river in Hamilton County, Ohio.  As far as can be discovered, she never went to Florida like Ponce de Leon, in search of a fountain of youth, but she found a way to cheat "Father Time" many an instance, in fact, just about every time that the U.S. Census taker came knocking.

In 1850 her parents couldn't lie, but she was just two years old (b. ca. 1848).  As she was just about to hit her teen years, she turned 11 in 1860 (b. ca. 1849).  Ten years later she was only eight years older (b. ca. 1851).  She basically stuck to her story in the 1880s and in 1900, but by 1910 it would appear she was only seven years old when she married in 1866 (It was recorded as 51 in 1910).

As always, the stone carver had the last word, when he cut "1847-1914" into the cold marble of her tombstone.

Any family's set of U.S. Census statistics are only as good as the knowledge of the informant who answered the door on any given day during a census year, but sometimes one has to be careful in that vanity may have answered when the census taker knocked!

A Bad Mixture

A census taker asked the woman at the door, "How many in your family?"

"Five," snapped the answer.  "Me, the old man, kid, cow and cat."

"And the politics of your family?"

"Mixed.  I'm a Republican, the old man's a Democrat, the kid's wet, the cow's dry, and the cat's a Populist."

Source:  The Cynthiana Democrat, July 11, 1929.