LDS Church Announces Images for 1880 US Census

The LDS Church announced last week that their 1880 US Census index is now linked with digital images of the original census documents. You can search the census for free at http://www.familysearch.org, but unless you're a church member, viewing the digital images will cost you.

Why am I covering this here? Because the familysearch.org interface for the 1880 census search is lovely. The search itself is located at familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_search.asp?PAGE=census/search_census.asp .The first thing you need to do is specify that you want to search for the 1880 census (there are two other census you can search for on this page) because that'll change what you can search for. Once you've done that you'll see you can search by name (either name-in-general or Head of Household name), country of birth, birth year or range, race, state of residence, and county of residence.

Once you've run the search, you'll get a list of people who match your search (and the search results are returned lightning-quick; very nice.) Click on one and you'll get a variety of information on that person including year of birth, age, occupation, marital status, and birthplace of mother and father. Don't forget to click on the Household link on the upper-right part of the page! There you'll get similar information on each person in the household.

Looking for the digital images? Look at the bottom of each person's page. There you'll see a link to the digital images at Ancestry.com, which are available by subscription.

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