In verifying a person’s identity in our family line, legitimate sources are absolutely necessary. If a relative were working on our line and made a notation in the source area that said; “I believe this is the correct person?” With no other evidence, an experi- enced researcher in that family may suspect that the entry is in error. Without any more information than that it may very well be an incorrect entry in the file. There are so many indexed records now and so many great research tools to assist us, that to guess is unacceptable. With the tools and information now available to us, it may cause us to feel as Cindy Carman who wrote; Your eyes grow wide, your pulse quickens and you exclaim, “I have finally found her/him!” There it is, the break in that 25-year-old brick wall. You have finally found the parents of an ancestor which will extend at least that part of your pedigree one more generation and perhaps open it up to further discoveries. But wait, are there sources listed that prove the relationship, and are they reliable? The rule of thumb for testing the reliability of a genealogical source is to ask the question, “How close to the event in question is the source, who created the source, and for what purpose was the source created?”
Birth, Christening, Marriage, Death, Probate Records, and Land Records etc. are all wonderful if they are available for the ancestor we are researching. However, quite often we can only count on the good old and often reliable Census Record.
Can’t you just see a census taker trudging through the snow, out on the prairie, where family farms were sometimes miles apart. Chances are he, the taker, had no more than a grade school education and the hope and expectation that he would record a family’s data accurately, and that may be expecting too much. In a town his job was much easier but, as often as not, there were no educated people in the household who could give accurate, correctly spelled names, birthplaces and ages (at least before and during the 1800s). Compulsory Education in the United States was not a law in this country until 1910.
The following Poem entitled Census Taker describes it beautifully:
Census Taker
It was the first day of census, and all through the land
The pollster was ready…a black book in hand.
He mounted his horse for a long dusty ride,
His book and some quill were tucked close by his side.
A long winding ride down a road barely there;
Toward the smell of fresh bread wafting, up through the air. The woman was tired, with lines on her face,
And wisps of brown hair she tucked back into place. She gave him some water…as they sat at the table
And she answered his questions…the best she was able. He asked of her children. Yes, she had quite a few,
The oldest was twenty; the youngest was two.
She held up a toddler with cheeks round and red,
His sister, she whispered, was napping in bed.
She noted each person who lived there with pride, And she felt the faint stirring of the wee one inside.
He noted the sex, the color, the age.
The marks from the quill soon filled up the page.
At the number of children, she nodded her head,
And saw her lips quiver for the three that were dead.
The places of birth she “never forgot”.
Was it Kansas? Or Utah? Or Oregon…or not?
They came from Scotland, of that she was clear,
But she wasn’t quite sure- just how long they’d been here.
They spoke of employment, of schooling and such,
They could read some…and write some…though really not much. When the questions were answered, his job there was done, So he mounted his horse and he rode toward the sun. We can almost imagine his voice loud and clear, “May God bless you all for another ten years”.
Now picture a time warp…it’s now you and me,
As we search for the people on our family tree.
We squint at the census and scroll down so slow,
As we search for that entry from long, long ago.
Could they only imagine on that long ago day,
That the entries they made would affect us this way?
If they knew, would they wonder at the yearning we feel, And the searching that makes them so increasingly real,
We can hear if we listen the words they impart,
Through their blood in our veins and their voice in our heart.
—Author Unknown
In spite of the problems with census records we have to be grateful for what information we are able to glean from them because they very often lead us to more records. We should also express our gratitude to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the other large family history data companies for the accurate records and huge databases they have and are still accumulating, indexing and putting together for our family research purposes.