The fifth lesson in the NGS Home Study Course is about census records. I use census records all the time and didn’t learn anything new; however, as with most of the lessons so far, doing the assignments brought out holes in my research.
The first assignment in this lesson is to create a census research checklist based on the 4-generation pedigree chart one is working on throughout the course. The task is to identify each federal census taken during the individuals’ lifetimes and to indicate where you would look (county and state) for the census records.
As you can see, I’ve already located most of the census records, but there are several that I haven’t located yet. A few individuals are missing most census records, most notably the McEntires and Alexanders, so those are big holes that need to be filled.
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Good idea. I use a spreadsheet instead of a Word document but the principle is the same. The spreadsheet also allows you to see each person’s timeline so you can see overlapping generations.
Carole Riley´s last [type] ..Have you considered a One Name Study
Thanks for the comment Carole! I would normally use a spreadsheet, too. This was an assignment for the NGS Home Study course and they had some very specific formatting requirements that I thought would be easier to do in Word. A spreadsheet also lets you sort on any field, so you can see everyone missing from a specific census year, for example.