Census Records

Census transcriptions place a household in a particular place in a particular year, which is what turns a name into a family. The federal enumerations here begin in 1830 and list heads of household, ages, occupations and birthplaces, depending on which year you are reading.

These are volunteer transcriptions of the original schedules rather than scans, so they are searchable in ways the images are not. The earliest censuses count household members in age brackets instead of naming them. Use the surname indexes alongside these pages to catch variant spellings.