Census Dates of Record

Thanks to the Region Roots blog from Lake County (Indiana) Public Library for posting this handy reference guide to the official census dates of record for the fifteen US censuses currently publicly available (1790-1930). For a quick handy bookmark you can't beat it.

These dates are more important than the date when the census taker showed up at your ancestor's household. If the census taker and the informant understood the census instructions and followed them, each census entry should reflect the household composition as of the date of record, not the date the census taker was actually there.

Of course not everyone followed the instructions, but in figuring out what a record means, the first step (ideally) is to know the rules under which it was created. If you want to know all about the rules involved in the creation of what may be the #1 most used genealogy source, one useful reference is the Census Bureau's 2002 publication Measuring America, available for free on line in Part 1 and Part 2 in PDF format.

Lake County Indiana resource

The occasional Region Roots blog from the Lake County Public Library in Merrillville points out an old but good index resource that was a 1938 doctoral thesis at the University of Chicago: "Sources & History for the History of Lake County, Indiana," by Minnie Margaret Ravenscroft. It's a cumulative index to 15 sources.

The thesis is not on line. And it's not in many physical libraries either. Besides Lake County, worldcat reveals that the following libraries hold copies: Hammond Public, University of Chicago, and the ever-reliable Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne.

Remembering the Lincoln Highway

Arcadia Publishing has published Cynthia Ogorek's The Lincoln Highway around Chicago, and she'll be talking about it Saturday, May 10, at a meeting of the Indiana Lincoln Highway Association in Schererville (Lake County), Indiana. Details at Region Roots: Northwest Indiana Genealogy, a blog from the Lake County Public Library in Merrillville.

Region Roots blog from Lake County, Indiana

"Indiana Librarian" blogs once or twice a week from the Lake County Public Library in Merrillville, covering a mix of local resources (such as the Calumet Regional Archives), national resources (Clifford Neal Smith's Federal Land Series), beginner information (getting started with online genealogy), and local meetings (on 2 Feb Lake County Genealogist Marlene Polster will give a slide show on publishing your genealogy).