Census Records

Probably one of the most popular resources for genealogy: CENSUS records. Census records will give you a TON of great information including all people in the household, their ages, their marital status, their relationship to the head of the household, their place of birth, parental places of birth, etc and so on. Census records are probably the most readily available and probably the best place to start.

One word of caution with census records: transcription errors. Census records are only as accurate as the person taking them. Watch for spelling errors. If you see SMYTH as a last name when you are looking for SMITH and all the residents names match, chances are that SMYTH really should be SMITH. You are ok to use that SMYTH record if everything else matches. This is a FREQUENT occurrence with immigrants' names coming from the Netherlands and Denmark!!! Just match all information before deciding if it's the same family you are looking for.

**AND...it wasn't uncommon to see MIDDLE names being used as FIRST names on census records. Your John D Smith may appear as Donald J. Smith on the census records!**

I've seen it previously, but because I ran into a CLASSIC example today with it, I wanted to make a point to address that this happens! My Loren Freguson was Archibald L. Ferguson, but because the parents and location matched, I knew Archibald=Loren and I discovered his middle name at the same time.