Posts Tagged ‘census’
This continues a series of guest posts from my friends around the blogosphere who can offer specialized tips for kids.
Lorel Kapke on using Sort Your Story
Finding your grandparents name listed in a document can be very exciting, not just for you but for your parents as well. My dad Raymond Kapke, was 5 years old when his father Walter Kapke died and he new little of his fathers life. He took the train from Milwaukee to Cedarburg, WI to visit his grandparents, John Kapke and Mother Marie Nero but they passed away when Ray was 7 and 8 years old. Ruby Toll, Walter’s wife, was left to raise Ray and his three older brothers, this left little time to discuss their family history. Ruby and her mother Bertha Gilbert ran a boarding house and while cooking and baking they would talk about family with little Ray under foot, this was during the 1930’ and 1940’s, during troubled times.
So back to finding those documents and forming a picture of your family as you put the pieces of your puzzle together.
I went into Ancestry.com and entered my grandfathers SURNAME (last name) and First name and found my grandfather in the 1920 Census. Walter was listed with Ruby and dad’s older brothers but my father would have to wait until the 1930’s census as he was born in 1923. Each Census offers different data and 1920 Census offered this information.
I transcribed and placed this valuable information into the Sort Your Story Profiler and included thumbnails of both the 1920 Census and the Ancestry.com 1920 Template Census for reference.
Now it is time to print out this data and add to the KAPKE PROFILER BOOK!
I’ve acquired valuable information to continue the search for more information about my grandfather.
Walter A KAPKE.
Have you found a Census of your grandparent???
Thank you Lorel for sharing your story about Walter Kapke!
Last week I posted a few great research files from the PBS website. There was another fantastic resource you should know about. It is called the Ancestors How to Select a Record to Search.
This four page document outlines information on record types and where to find information for that type. For example, if you are looking for a birth date of an ancestor, look for sources like cemetery records, military records, town records, and census records. These are just a few of the records listed.
Not only does the sheet outline where to find records but also background information on a place, group or subgroup. Examples include the history of a place or group or record repositories.
The sheet ends with a glossary of genealogical terms. These are all terms every young family historian should learn.
Download the sheet and print it out for your research file. I think you will find it very useful.
Following up on our discussion of census records, did you notice some censuses provide the occupation, or job, of the individuals? How do the jobs of your ancestors compare to the jobs your parents and grandparents do today?
Rootsweb provides a great list of occupation titles and what they mean. For instance, did you know an Accountant used to be called an Accomptant? How about a bar tender as an Ale Draper? A parish man or what we might call a minister or priest was referred to as an Amen Man.
Look through the list and see if you can find the occupations of your parents and grandparents. What are their jobs called today and what were they called? Have fun with this.
It’s Monday! Are you ready to add something new to your genealogy file? Let’s talk about the U.S. Federal Census.
What is the census? It is a count of all the people living in the United States, town by town. The government uses this information to decide where to build more schools, more roads and where to provide more money and resources.
Ok, you are probably saying to yourself, “I understand what the census is but what does the census have to do with Mappy Monday?” One of the great things about the census is it provides an address for your ancestors, depending on what year it was taken. How do you know if an address is provided? Let’s look at the information below to see.
The census was first taken in 1790. Until 1850, the census listed the head of the family and a count of others in the household. In 1850 and future censuses, the names of all individuals were added. By 1880, the street name was added with a house number. These addresses are important to keep track of in your notes. They can help you locate people in other records or help prove the person you found is the one you are looking for.
You can take these addresses for a family and put them on a map. You can see the migration, or movement, of a family from place to place, whether it is in a city or across the country.
Where can you find the census? Sites like Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org have census records. Repositories like the National Archives and local research libraries also carry the census on microfilm. Sometimes local genealogy societies will transcribe the records and publish them in journals.
What else is on a census and what does it look like? After 1880, the census provides a lot of clues about a family. You will find things like the individual’s birth place (state or country), month and year of birth, year of immigration, naturalization status, occupation and whether or not they attended school if they were too young to work.
The census can provide a lot of information about your family so add it to your list of records to search. Take a look at the 1900 census for my great-great-grandfather, Joseph Kokoska, starting on line 60.
