Objective: How to get the most out of the viewer as well as how to get the most out of the census records.
Why pick the 1880 Census? The selection was made more than 17 years ago. Over that past 17 years the reason for the selection has probably changed many times as management and everything else changed including technology. In this 17 years eleven and a half million man-hours were expended to extract the data. Many people in the stakes of the church were used to extract the data.
A decade ago FamilySearch came out, dedicated for use in Family History Centers and you had to be a computer specialist to load the software. As times changed and technology changed it became easier to load the software and it was made available to other public records facilities, but it was still not for home use. As computers became available in the home we started shifting the distribution of our product to make them available for home use. For example: the PAF programs, Resource Files data bases, and FamilySearch Internet.
There is good reason for making available the 1880 U.S. Census. By 1880 the boundaries of the states of the United States of America were pretty well set. The census covers 38 states and 7 territories. The Oklahoma Territory was Indian Territory and was not yet established as a United States Territory at that time. The federal census was not taken there as it was in other territories such as Utah and Idaho. There was an Indian Census taken that year but it was taken for a different purpose and was not included in the 1880 U.S. Census Project.
What kinds of information is in the 1880 U.S. Census? It has the name of the head of house and a list of everyone else in the household. While we usually think of a household as a mother, father, and a list of children or other relative, for census purposes a household might be an institution like a ship or a fort or a hotel or an insane asylum. This census is the first one that gives where the mother and father were born, which is another reason for choosing the 1880 census. It gives the name of each individual, the age, the occupation, place of birth, and the place of birth of the mother and father.
It contains 50 Million records. A lot of immigrants came from Europe through the British Isles. Two years ago the Church published the 1881 British Census, some 30 million records. They are currently working on the 1881 Canadian census at 4.5 million records. So we will have 85 million records from England, Canada and The United States of America at that same period of time.
Note: All of the information that was listed in the fields of the enumerator record is on the 1880 U.S. Census CD Set. There may be a few notes, outside the fields, that the enumerator wrote down which are not on the CD Set.
In the 1880 U.S. Census Data Base there are two sections: the National Index which contains all 50 million records of all states and all territories; the Regional Index which includes regions and subregions. Utah and other western states are included in the Western Region. Pennsylvania was so large, 4 CDs, that it became a subregion of the Atlantic States Region. The reason we chose to have a regional index is because we had such a powerful search engine.
Discrepancies between your record and the census listing might be for any of the following reasons:
Note: If a name is corrupted it is usually the surname because surnames tend to be unusual while given names are often William, Mary, Bill or other common name. So there are a variety of reasons you might not find your ancestor at first, but do not give up there are several tools to allow you to find them even through the errors. Ray showed The National Index and how to focus the list, The Regional Index, the Advanced Query, wild card searches, searches by bits and pieces.
The Viewers.
When you purchase any of the major Resource Files you will always get a viewer included in the package. The viewer for the new Scandinavian Vital Records is Viewer 4.0 as is the viewer for the 1880 U.S. Census. Always use the latest viewer. It can be used with any CD set with a lower number viewer.
After the viewer is installed, to install a new resource file CD set such as the 1880 U.S. Census CD s Set, you open the viewer and click on the top line in the list which says "Click here to add a Resource File to this list". The program will ask you to put in disk #1 of that set. You follow directions by moving both choices to the right part of the window and the program will be installed for both The 1880 United States Census CD Set and The 1880 United States Census - National Index.
Next you Run the Viewer Program and select either the National Index or the Regional Index (1880 United States Census). Selecting the National Index enter the last name, for example, Rencher. Notice the many different ways Rencher is spelled. To provide optional ways of spelling is one of the features of the search engine that allows the user to not have to guess at all the various ways of spelling. This is also done for towns and states in a different way. The search engine standardized the states and towns so that you do not have to know all the ways that a location name can be spelled.
In general, when doing a search it is better to start with broad enough parameters that you get many hits then narrow the fields until you focus in on the desired individuals. If you start too narrow you may eliminate the person you want to find because of some small error in the data base for example the name Erp. There are 1080 Erps. We can either Modify Search or we can View Matches. Upon viewing there are many spellings. The viewer brings out many variations in the names which helps the researcher find options in searching for his people. Bracketed years on the viewer means that the years were calculated and were not on the enumeration sheet.
The red underline is a hyperlink that you can click on and focus on that restriction. For example if we click on the red underlined IL (Illinois) birth place we would focus the list of Erps down to those born in Illinois. This lists instead of 1080 Erps now only 66. Now if we select the Earps living in AZ (Arizona) the search engine brings us down to only one, Wyatt S. Earp.
To find the household, occupation, parents birth places and neighbors where this individual is located we have to go to the regional disks. To do this we select Search and click on Locate Individual. The program asks for the 1880 United States Census - Western States Region disk #35. (Incidentally, it is better to not anticipate the disk that will be requested by the program. If you guess wrong the program can become confused.)
There are several ways to tag individuals or families. Tagging individuals or families allows them to be printed or saved to a file in Gedcom or RTF format. When you download a household from the census records all you will have is a bunch of individuals which are not linked as families because of the definition of household for the 1880 U.S. Census.
To find the individual's occupation and the birth places for mother and father click on the 'Show Details' icon at the top. If you use the RTF, a generic format for word processors, be sure your word processor is turned on to display hidden text else you may not be able to see or print the occupation and parents birth places. You can also read the instructions under Help, Help Topics, Index, Census Records, Display, Show/Hide Details, Display.
With the powerful Regional Search engine we have a few more options. If we put in Ansel Harmon living in Holden, Utah. Notice that the Family History Library Film number as well as the National Archives Film number and page number are provides in the data base. (Once you have the film you go to the page number listed.)
By scrolling up or down you can find who the neighbors are to find other families. You can mark Ansel Harmon then you can search for and mark the other families in the neighborhood in which you are interested. You can click F9 to get rid of the detail and show more families on the screen. If we are interested in his Harmon, Stringham, Jones and Bennett families in Holden we can mark them. After marking all the families of interest you can now view only those families that are marked by clicking on the "View" icon.
What can you do with that marked information? You can view it. You can print it. You can save it via File/Save As/ in RTF or as a Gedcom file to transfer the information to your own data base.
Bits and Pieces Searches:
In Utah there is a grandmother named Elizabeth McKenna born in England in 1805 living in San Pete County, Utah in 1880. The program will not find her under McKenna so we put in Elizabeth and everything else except the last name. We get back Elizabeth McKinnie living with her Daughter and son-in-laws family in Manti. The bracketed birth year, <1804>, means that the number was calculated from her age.
Wild Card Searches:
We were not able to find Hugh Farren in Pennsylvania probably because of the last name spelling. We know he is Hugh Farren, born in New York, Occupation: plumber, wife named Catherine (however Catherine is spelled). Go to Search for Individual. put in Hugh for the first name and Fa*n for the last name, Census Place: Pennsylvania Region. The program requests Atlantic Region Disk #8. We find Hugh Farvan and family. We can understand how a second "r" could be interpreted as a "v". We see a wife named Catharine and when we type F9 we see that he was a plummer.
Advanced Query Searches:
We can click on Search then Neighbors - Advanced Query. In the Query For: box type Hugh space plumber space ny. There are 200 plumbers, 6322 Hughs, and 861,750 Pennsylvanias and 32,164 Catharines in these records but only two which have the word plumber, Hugh, Pennsylvania and Catharine
In the 1881 British Advanced Query will allow searching for an individual by the place where he lived.
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