Thursday, August 2, 2012

Aug 2 - The first US Census

Aug 2 – The first US Census was taken today in 1790. Have you checked all the censuses your ancestor might show up in? If your library or genealogical society subscribes to Ancestry Library Edition or HeritageQuestOnline, you can search the census for free.

I love being able to search for census records and to actually see them. Using Ancestry or HertiageQuest is so much easier than using microfilm readers. Before, you kind of had to know where to look, but now you type in your name and perhaps some other facts such as birth year and location of the person and you get a list of matches. With Ancestry.com you only have to hover your mouse over the hit and it will show other people in the household. This saves even more time because you don’t have to actually click the link and wait for the computer to bring up the results. You might think 2-5 seconds doesn’t matter much, but if you are looking up a bunch of records, every second saved is a second you are able to spend doing something else.

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