Tools To Make Your Census Hunt Easier

Here's a hint if you can't find your family in the 1930 census search: narrow down to the state where they were (and the county if you know it), pick the relative with the most unusual first name, and search on that without searching for a last name. I would never have found my cousins but for that. It looked like a pen exploded on the last name when I looked at the actual page. Not even Soundex could help me.

Here's another hint. Check out CensusTools ( http://www.censustools.com/ ) which has several Excel spreadsheets available for free download. These spreadsheets cover a bevy of censuses (censii?)

There's a general census tracker so you can put all the info for one person in one place. (I can see where this is going to come in handy -- oh, grandpa Moooorttttton!) There are trackers for states and trackers for countries. There are even a couple of trackers for people-lists that are not related to the census. Most of them have a sample data page so you can get a feel for how they work.

There are extensive help files on this site if you feel a little uncomfortable with spreadsheets, as well as a few back issues of a newsletter and a very brief link list. Handy tools!

Posted to Genealogy-Census | TrackBack