Learn the Lingo - Census

Census

 

Censuses are government surveys taken to gain social statistics such as how many people are living in a particular town, how many children there are an area, how many homes are in a city, etc. etc. The typical timescale is once every ten years; in this country (UK) the censuses of names of UK residents start with 1841, and go right up to 2011; in the USA it is on the decade changeover (so 1900, 1910, etc.) and there are local variations in countries, states, counties, towns, cities, all over the world.

 

The upshot of all this is that censuses, intended for statistical purposes, incidentally provide a huge wealth of information for genealogists - depending on the country and the year, different details were taken, but at the very basic level there is names, ages, occupations, and addresses. They form a fundamental part of family history because they allow people to trace family units, movements, and rough birth details.