Following are some notes on sources of census information on the
web (as of Feb 2006)
First, I'd recommend having a high speed connection (either DSL, Cable
Modem or T1!). You'll be viewing lots of images, one per census
page, so I can't imagine using this with a dial-up for this type of
research. On the other hand, if you have access to high-speed
internet, this is really slick! You can really make a lot of
progress fast with the different indices.
Search Tips: click here
Here are some links I use to get to
some of the search engines quickly, bypassing the main pages
Ancestory.com
Census Search
Genealogy.com -
Main
Genealogy.com
Census Search
Genealogy.com
1900 census
Genealogy.com
1910 census
Genealogy.com 1900
census - PA
Genealogy.com 1910
census - PA
Family
Search (LDS) 1880 census index (FREE!)
SSI Death
Index (FREE!)
A comparison of Ancestory.com and Genealogy.com census search
engines
- Cost of each is about $100 per year.
Index comparison (based on my own checking of the databases)
Year
|
ancestory.com
|
genealogy.com
|
heritagequest.com
|
1790
|
heads
|
heads
|
heads
|
1800
|
heads
|
heads
|
heads
|
1810
|
heads
|
heads
|
heads
|
1820
|
heads
|
heads
|
heads
|
1830
|
heads
|
none
|
N/A
|
1840
|
heads
|
none
|
N/A
|
1850
|
heads
|
none
|
N/A
|
1860
|
full
every name
|
heads
|
heads
|
1870
|
full
every name
|
heads
|
heads
|
1880
|
full
every name
|
none
|
N/A
|
1890
|
doesn't
exist*
|
doesn't
exist*
|
doesn't exist*
|
1900
|
full
every name
|
heads
|
heads
|
1910
|
full
every name
|
heads
|
heads
|
1920
|
full
every name
|
none
|
heads
|
1930
|
full
every name
|
none
|
heads
|
|
|
|
|
- Full - full index of everyone
- Heads - heads-of-household only, or minors if a different surname
Note, only heads of household are shown in 1790-1840 census records, so
that's all you could ever find in those years
* for all practical purposes, the 1890 census was burned up
A Comparison of genealogy.com and ancestory.com
1 Searching
a) Ancestry.com
- Very flexible! any combination of first or last names,
location, birth state or year.
- Some wild cards allowed.
- Minimum three characters followed by "*". For example, Con*
to find Conrad, Conway, etc.
- Can use "?" to match one character. For example, Conr?d to
match Conrad or Conrod.
- Includes soundex search of surname in all searches. But
note that it doesn't always work. I've searched for McDevitt using
soundex and I don't get any McDevitt matches. Try soundex on and
off and check both results
- Realize, you can do some pretty creative searches. If you
want to find everyone who's first name is Blanchard, aged 5, in
Huntingdon County, you can do that (like if the person might have
gotten married of if the surname might be misspelled or transcribed).
b) Genealogy.com
- First and Last Name required! (if first name is blank, a list of
all valid first names, across every possible record anywhere, is
created. This is not very useful). Note also that there are
places to specify a middle name, and birth year, but as far as I can
tell, this information is ignored. It is not used to screen
matches, sort matches or anything. Just some false hope for
reducing the matches.
- No wild card searches are allowed anywhere.
- No soundex capability.
- Realize, these limitation mean it can pretty much can bring up
hundreds of matches across all counties in a state. To page through
worthless matches (when the host computer could narrow my search in a
microsecond) makes this a real disadvantage for using this system for
any common surname. The other thing is that you must use a first
name. You can't even search for people with only a last name in a
big city. So if you don't know the parents' names, I don't know how you
could ever find them using Genealogy.com.
- If you want to only search the census records for a particular
state, you'll need to keep hitting your browser "back" key. If
you fill in a new name on the listing-of-matches page, it will go back
to searching all Genealogy.com records (including the ones you don't
have access to).
2. Viewing
a) Ancestry.com
- Depends on census. I don't know why, but some show up full
screen and some require browsing a mini-window of the full census
page. Full screen can be awkward at times. That is, I find
places where I can't pan around a page. It always zooms all the
way out when I pan. Seems random.
- Occasional messages that "page is unavailable". Better to
go to genealogy.com to check that page I guess.
b) Genealogy.com
- Brings up a full page with scroll bars. I prefer this
format for downloading a page quickly that I can browse. This is
the one thing that I prefer at genealogy.com.
3. Browsing
a) Ancestry.com
- Can browse census rolls by state, county and location/enumeration
districts. This can be useful if you have information from
somewhere else showing enumeration districts, or if you only have a
city name to go by.
b) Genealogy.com
- Can browse census rolls by state, county and census roll
number. This can be useful if you have information from another
source as to which census roll number.
Conclusion
They both have some deficiencies, but I prefer Ancestory.com. Much
easier to use, every-name indices, and I don't feel like I'm constantly
being asked to buy other records. I can search just what I paid
for and make a lot of progress. If only they would open the full
census page in one screen like ancestory.com! And they need to
index 1900 and 1910. Since the 1890 census is missing, you just
can't get by skipping 30 years of information (1890-1920)!
A note on heritagequest.com. I hear that they have the above
information which is fully searchable by any attribute (name, age,
area, etc. including first-name only for a specific region) which would
make it far superior to genealogy.com for the 1900 and 1910
census. This is supposed to be availabe via some libaries.
Check for availabilty. It would seem the prefered way to search
1900 and 1910.