Searching the 1880 US Census Index? HAVE YOU TAKEN full advantage of the search capabilities of the 1880 US Census Index?
Ron Wild offers advice on how to take advantage of the census’ search capabilities.
No other genealogical indexing project took more millions of volunteer hours and years to complete than the 1880 US Census Index. Once the data was captured using the LDS Family History Library triple check system the programming of the data took many months and much testing before it was ready to be released early in 2001 to genealogical researchers. Fifty million residents of and visitors to the US were captured on this census with a wealth of data about each person that makes this index the most powerful database available for those with 19th-century US research interests. The index was released on 55 CD-ROM discs with national and seven regional research capabilities and is available for purchase for the very reasonable price of $49.95.
Creative Searching
The key to creative searching of the 1880 Index is the search table that allows combinations of single or combined search fields to come into play so that each search can be a custom search for your ancestors based on the information you have available. The more information you can include on the search form the more precise the search can be and the following examples give some insight into different ways in which searches can be organized to pin down an elusive ancestor. The most basic of searches can tell you how many persons of different nationalities are on the national census database or in a particular region. By entering a country in the Country of Birth field the following information becomes available:
Birthplace Individuals Canada 709,919 England 665,924 Germany 1,974,776 Ireland 1,878,062 Scotland 171,759 Wales 83,938
Obviously no one is going to page down these hundreds of thousands of individuals to find an ancestor they know was born in Germany or elsewhere. Let’s suppose you know that your ancestor was named Collins and came from Scotland. It could also be Wilson who was born in Tennessee or any other name place combination relevant to your search. What would this do to your search results? We would enter Collins in the Surname field and Scotland in the Country of Birth field and then do the search. Entering birthplace Scotland and surname Collins, we turn up 200 entries.
We immediately see the difference that just one additional piece of information can make and instead of looking at 171,759 different Scottish entries we now only need to look at 200. But why stop there, when we know from information in our file that he likely settled in Ohio? When we add this additional piece of information, the list really gets manageable. By adding the state of residence the list shrinks from 200 entries to a mere 14.
This is very manageable, but let’s suppose that we knew from our previous research that his wife was named Jane and was born in England around 1830. Then by switching our search to Jane we could likely get exactly the right family by filling in Birthplace England, Resident Ohio, Birthdate 1830 and Surname Collins, Given Name Jane. The result points to just one family with a Hugh Collins father born in 1825 in Scotland with wife Jane born in England in 1829. Not only does this give you the name of your Scottish and English ancestors and their children but probably a new mystery to solve, since the results suggest that Jane had a previous marriage to someone named Petcrew born in Scotland and that her husband Hugh also had a previous wife born in Scotland from which sons Hugh and William, who were born in Pennsylvania, resulted. As so often happens with genealogical research, a problem solved generates new problems that require different approaches usually in different places.
We started with an impossible search but by adding information that we knew or surmised from our previous research on this ancestor we were able to pinpoint a family and provide the possibility of finding other generations in England and Scotland. This is a very basic search strategy that allows you to enter information in any of the fields that were indexed on the CD version of the census. Keep in mind that not all fields were indexed, so it is important to look up the actual enumeration page on a film since other valuable information is included that will provide family history data that could help with ongoing research.
Finding Families
One area of research that has always been of above average difficulty in Irish and German research is knowing from where in the old country an ancestor came. The 1880 US census is full of surprises in this respect: the example shown below for Magdalena Lamparter indicates her birth in Wurtemberg and that her father and mother were born there too. Magdalena appears to have been married twice and it would appear that both her husbands were born in Baden. These are wonderful finds and the ease with which the 1880 census can be searched and the ability to search equally easily for neighbors frequently turns up relatives living nearby or sons and daughters who have married and live on an adjacent farm. The possibility for creative research of this kind has never been better and what took hours of patient film cranking can now be accomplished in a few minutes.
With the ability to quickly search by ethnicity and group, the possibilities are endless. Although many names may have been Americanized or misspelled, searching by country of birth will bring together some common facts that will allow families to be identified. Added bonuses include having mothers-in-law living with families so that daughters' names can be revealed and frequently the parents of either the husband and or the wife are living with the family and provide unexpected information that quickly adds an earlier generation. The ease of searching will guarantee that you will be motivated to spend more time searching the indexed 1880 census and you have immediate access, no waiting for films and then finding that the family you want are in another county or have moved on from where they were in 1870. The 1880 National Index will help you find them wherever they moved in the entire US.
"The results of a search for Magdalena Lamparter."
This article originally appeared in our January/February 2002 issue.
view subscription information | return to main menu
