Census Records
Census records can be used for a variety of purposes. Although they are designed to be used by the federal government when it comes time to allocate federal resources throughout the nation, census records do have other purposes as well. Many people have used them to put together a compilation of genealogy information about their family.
First off, it is important to understand that census records were never supposed to be used for genealogical purposes. On the same token, there are few other records of the United States population that are so effective when it comes to determining a person's ancestry. Federal census records are excellent research material and they can be found online or in most of the major public libraries across the nation. Data is organized by family name in alphabetical order, and are found in both printed and electronic form. Websites such as Ancestry.com also provide census records that can be used to track a person's ancestry.
Census records can only be used for and during a certain period of time. For example, federal laws mandate that federal records for the past 72 years are kept private. This means that the 1930 census is the most readily available official records of the census for people who are looking tor track their genealogy.
It is important to watch out for things that may confuse you. Family names may change, spellings of family names may change, and your family may not be from where you think they are. There are a lot of things that tend to confuse people when doing research through federal records, so the moral of the story is this: census records may tell you something different than what you thought you knew. When doing ancestry research through the records, be prepared to learn something about your family that you had no idea of.
