Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen
A "brick-wall" DIY genealogy podcast that features your questions and Kathleen Brandt's answers. She wants your stories, questions, and “brick walls”. But be ready to add to your "to-do" list. As Kathleen always says, this is a Do it yourself (DIY) genealogy podcast. “I'll show you where the shovel is, but I'm not digging up your family.”
Maybe, you have no idea where to start searching for an ancestor. Or, perhaps you want to know more about your family folklore. Host Kathleen has 20 years in the industry and is the founder of a3genealogy. She's able to dispense genealogy research advice and encouragement in understandable terms that won't get you lost in genealogy jargon. Along with her husband and co-host, John, she helps you accomplish "do-it-yourself" research goals, learn some history, and have a bit of fun along the way. Light-hearted and full of detailed info, Hittin' the Bricks is your solution for your brick-wall research problems.
Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen
Off The Wall: Making Sense of the U.S.Census
The perfect episode for the DIY genealogist! We all love a good myth-busting session, and what better topic than the US Census! John needs Kathleen to address his burning census questions! (Shhh! He didn't like all the answers).
This question/answer session covers census and census substitutes. We cover colonial era enumeration schedules (Musters), as well as Federal census quirks starting in 1790. Don't forget the 1850 and 1860 slave schedules!
We love equipping you a few must-visit resources:
stevemorse.org
archives.gov (About Census Records)
census.gov (instructions for census taker)
a3genealogy (search bar in upper lefthand corner)
Trust us - you won't want to miss this episode!
Be sure to bookmark linktr.ee/hittinthebricks for your one stop access to Kathleen Brandt, the host of Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen. And, visit us on YouTube: Off the Wall with Kathleen John and Chewey video recorded specials.
Hittin' the Bricks is produced through the not-for-profit, 501c3 TracingAncestors.org.
Thanks to MyHeritage for their generous support to Hittin' the Bricks with Kathleen! Follow us on social media and subscribe to HTB with Kathleen in order to enter your name in our monthly MyHeritage Complete Package giveaway starting Jan 2024!
Ladies and gentlemen from the depths of flyover country in the heartland of America, the Kansas City on the other side of the mighty Moe, welcome to Hitting the Bricks with Kathleen, a genealogy show that features your questions and her answers. I am John, your humble hubby host, and on this episode we'll be going off the wall to make sense of the US Census. So let's start Hitting the Bricks. Okay, so this is another episode of Off the Wall, and I've interrupted Kathleen on a regular work day in order for her to answer some questions about the Census for Off the Wall. And so we're making sense of the Census, and so I have a few questions, and these are my personal questions. These are ones that I've come across in doing my minimal research. So are you ready for the Lightning Round, kathleen? We'll see. Okay, all right, first, the first question I have is when was the first US Census taken?
Kathleen Brandt:Well, the US Federal Census the first one was 1790. But remember there were a lot of Census before that. Matter of fact, as early as like 1624, there were what they called musters, and they did the same purpose as the Census, and that is to take an account of the inhabitants within the United States or in the territory.
John Brandt:And I'm assuming that was for whoever was colonizing. So that would be for the British, for us.
Kathleen Brandt:At that point those records are actually British records. Yes, they're only ones that the pre-colonial Okay.
John Brandt:All right. So that's the count all the way to today. Why is the Census important today?
Kathleen Brandt:For the same reason it was yesterday here, and that is to take an account of the inhabitants that are living in the United States and with that number, that's how you decide how your representatives what the states will get as far as budget money from the federal government. All of that is the same reason it was before. So the purpose of the Census is really constitutional, it's not. It doesn't really change. What changes the questions on the Census? Okay.
John Brandt:So here's one I came across. This was in one of our podcasts that I learned this, but I'm going to ask it again, just because I think it's really important to reiterate. And is a Census a primary or a secondary source?
Kathleen Brandt:It is a primary source, it is a secondary source and it can be a tertiary source.
John Brandt:Okay, so I thought it was a secondary source.
Kathleen Brandt:It's a secondary source based on your questions, so it's not the document that determines the source. It's the information you're looking at.
John Brandt:Oh, interesting.
Kathleen Brandt:Okay. So if you're looking to find out who was the Census taker and what county and what was the date, then it's primary because that information was known, we know who wrote it, we know that there is a Census person who actually wrote down these facts. But if you're looking for a name, a spelling, a birth year, then it's secondary. We really don't know if it was accurate it needs to be corroborated and we don't really know who gave it, who was the informant, except in the 1940s.
John Brandt:Census so Okay. So why in the 1940s Census?
Kathleen Brandt:Well, in the 1940 census the instructions to the Census taker was please designate with an X that is encircled an X that is encircled, and that is the person who gave you the information in the household.
John Brandt:Oh, interesting Okay.
Kathleen Brandt:That's only in the 1940s. It was voted out or not chosen to keep in the 1950s.
John Brandt:When I'm researching Okay, what should I keep in mind while using a US census for research? And that was a big one that came up in my research, and somebody else's too, I think.
Kathleen Brandt:Well, this might not have come up in yours, but if you had the question of the population of a town and if it was an early census, you have to remember that Native Americans from not all Native Americans, who are not accounted for and that African Americans were slaves or ex-slaves. Rather, they were considered three-fifths of a person. So if you're looking for population, you need to watch that.
John Brandt:So I'm going to jump to a question. Were slaves ever enumerated on a census?
Kathleen Brandt:Yes, they were, but they were enumerated on what's called the slave schedules in 1850 and 1860.
John Brandt:Okay. So what are the slave schedules?
Kathleen Brandt:Obviously, they were not necessarily given by name. However, there are times that we will see them by name, just depending on how it was done by that census taker. That slave schedule went by the slave holder. So the slave holder would name all of the enslaved persons that he was accountable for and give their age, their complexion, color pretty much, and boy, girl, their gender.
John Brandt:And so now I'm going to jump back to a question about the informant, and is there any information given on the informant, on a census or, let's say, on a slave schedule?
Kathleen Brandt:You do get the name of the informant. Now, if you want to know more about the informant, you do your genealogy research for that informant, and there are times that we have to do that. We also want to know sometimes are they related to the people in a household for a particular reason, maybe because the names are spelled in a particular way, or there might be a question of who the informant was. So there are times we look up the informant.
John Brandt:And while I don't know, you don't know what I just forgot. All right, so where can I find we were talking about slave schedules? Where can I find a slave schedule? Because that's I don't think I've ever seen one on Ancestry. They're on Ancestry, are they?
Kathleen Brandt:Yes, you could just Google them. One of the things that are not used a lot in and they should be used all the time, both in Ancestry, family, in family search is their catalogs. So in Ancestry there's a catalog. If you go to that and you just put in under keyword slave schedules, then you can just click on it there. But people forget that it's a wonderful tool to get you to exactly what you're looking for.
John Brandt:I wasn't even aware. Well, it doesn't mean anything that I wasn't aware. It's not like I'm buried in research all the time, so me not being aware is not a major thing. I'm typically unaware.
Kathleen Brandt:Which brings me to the point that you need to continue your research.
John Brandt:Yes, I'll continue my research on awareness. No, not on awareness. Okay, so here's one of the questions. You made a big deal about this a while back. So what's with tick marks, and why are they so important?
Kathleen Brandt:People don't like doing the early genealogy census. Before 1850, we only had tick marks and we had the person, the homeowner or the household. The head of the household was the one that was enumerated and everyone else was just tick marks someone between 10 to 19, 20 to 29, that sort of thing, and there was just these columns with no names. You know that there's children in there and you might even know that there were slave persons or there's someone who might have been a parent, just based on the age bracket that they fell under. On the other hand, people who use it well, they can actually use it for brick walls, like I do all the time. You can figure out, based on the tick mark mark senses sometimes a father-son combination, especially if he didn't show up in 1820, but he does show up in 1830, another person under the father's name. So you can actually help with uniting families that way. Okay, but what are tick marks? Oh, it's literally. It's just a check mark. It's just a check mark in a one of the columns.
Kathleen Brandt:No names.
John Brandt:Okay, so it's just a blank column and then there's a tick mark somewhere in it.
Kathleen Brandt:Yes, so I would mark you under 60 to 69. But your name's not there.
John Brandt:You would just be in the household of somebody there who's between the ages of 60 and 69.
Kathleen Brandt:Yes, but if you were not the head of the household? The head of the household has a name.
John Brandt:Would it matter if I had a different name, if I wasn't related to them, if I was in order?
Kathleen Brandt:No, it does not matter, we would not know.
John Brandt:Does that not seem like it's really inaccurate?
Kathleen Brandt:Well, sometimes there's blended families in there. Immigrants might come and stay with their relatives, so it's not unusual.
John Brandt:No, but doesn't it just seem really inaccurate? It's called analysis. It's what is what it? Well, yeah, you have to analyze it, but doesn't the process of using tick marks? I'm sorry, but I'm not letting the census people off on this. If I'm a tick mark, then how do you know who is actually there other than a guest, that somebody would be about the same age, at the same time?
Kathleen Brandt:So remember what I have done. Before I get to the tick mark census, I've already done research from present day back. So when I get to the 1850s, I know who should be in a household in the 1840s. So when I get into the 1840s, if you were 19 in 1850, you should be about nine and there should be a tick mark for a boy under this parent's name in 1840. So I can identify if I have the right family or not. Let's say I am looking for this nine year old boy in 1840, and I'm looking at three Sam Thompson's, but only one of the Samuel Thompson's has a nine year old.
John Brandt:Okay.
Kathleen Brandt:So now I know that that's probably my right Samuel Thompson, and I can concentrate on that census record.
John Brandt:Well, I'm just going to say that tick marks seem to be. I'm sorry, that's lazy.
Kathleen Brandt:They are a wonderful tool that is a lazy reporting.
John Brandt:If you can't write down the name of the people who are in the house, I just don't know what to do.
Kathleen Brandt:Remember why we're doing the census is not to write down the names of people but keep an account of the people and know the head of the household. Well, you know.
John Brandt:I will agree to disagree on this point and I will move forward to the next extraordinary question that everybody wants to know the answer to and what is up with the 1890 census?
Kathleen Brandt:And nothing is up with it. It went down. The 1890 census was. It was more. We will say it was burned in a fire. Okay, all of them no, but they weren't burned in a fire. They were really destroyed in the flood taking out the fire. Where they were being held? They were in a basement, in a fireproof basement where someone didn't close a door. Seriously, yes, so they were in DC. It wasn't in it, it wasn't at the census bureau, because we it wasn't there yet. It was in one of the commerce buildings, I think.
John Brandt:And former president's bathroom, or you know?
Kathleen Brandt:no, john, it wasn't. It was in the basement.
John Brandt:It was in the basement, well, okay.
Kathleen Brandt:And in that basement also had a lot of other things that could burn, like the furnace, sure, so they did not close properly, close the fire door. Wow, it was because of that, when the fireman came in, the water went in, destroyed most of the 1860, I mean 1890 census. You must know, though I must okay that there are some fragments left From different states, like Texas has maybe 200 people in Texas that year. I don't know how many actually was salvaged. Seems a little low. Yeah, well, exactly.
John Brandt:So but they have tick marks. They could be tick marks.
Kathleen Brandt:Well, actually believe it or not, the 1890 census was different than all of the others. It actually took a family on every separate sheet, so it had information by family on every sheet, but only like 6,000, I think, in the whole nation was covered.
John Brandt:There that's. This is very conspiracy theory. I think we have a new direction.
Kathleen Brandt:Oh, wow, here we go.
John Brandt:We could definitely. Where's Angie Rodesky Built around the disappearance of the 1890 census?
Kathleen Brandt:Okay, but I do have one more thing to say about the 1890. Go ahead, there are other ways that we recover the information. Yeah, how?
John Brandt:what do I do with? I really need an 1890 census.
Kathleen Brandt:Well, you don't really ever need any of the census but there are state census. Some. Some states have state census on the five here, that Native American, the Indian territory in Oklahoma. They had their own 1890 census. If you were in certain enumeration districts, in certain territory Land and you were still enumerated in the 1890s, there are tax records that we use for 1890s. There's a lot of substitutes.
John Brandt:Okay, what is what would be the number one myth of Of the US census that most impacts genealogical research?
Kathleen Brandt:There's an 1870 wall when we're doing slave research. Our research on is previously enslaved people, right because in 1870 they were Of course enumerated, but in 1860 they were because they're only on the slave schedule as Milano Boyd 9.
John Brandt:Okay, I.
Kathleen Brandt:I have a problem with the defeated statement that that's a brick wall, because we already know census records are only so accurate. They're not definitive anyway. They need to be corroborated anyway. So I think there's a lot more we can do instead of so.
John Brandt:you've seen a lot of times in doing certain research that it's an artificial brick wall to say that we're stuck on this particular census when you shouldn't be relying necessarily on the census to that degree anyway. That's the conversation about tick marks. And thank you so much for putting that in English for me, because that is exactly what I was trying to say Well, I'm just making sure that I understand what you're trying to say, because that, after 25 years, is my job.
Kathleen Brandt:And you're doing well with us. Okay, so the other issue I have. The other myth is that it has factual information and once we see it we run with it. So the other myth is, once I find that census and I put it on my tree that is accurate and most of the time it's not it has something on there because, remember, a lot of it's secondary it could be tertiary, meaning that a neighbor gave the information. It could be incorrect. So the reliability on the census records is a false security.
John Brandt:So it's a trust, but verify sort of thing where you can. It's a starting point. It's never a finish point. Exactly so this one. I'll put you on a spot and see if you can rattle off at www off the top of your head. So is there a website that'll give more information on how to read a census or maybe more general information on it?
Kathleen Brandt:Absolutely my go to is the Steve Morse website, which is the SteveMorse. org, isn't it?
John Brandt:I don't know See.
Kathleen Brandt:Yes, it is SteveMorse. org.
John Brandt:M-O-R-S-E. Okay, stevemorse. org, and who's Steve Morse?
Kathleen Brandt:No idea. His name is Stephen Morse, though, but he does a whole lot of. It's online and he has a wonderful website. It's good for passenger lists, it is good for all of the Northeast, especially the New York area, and he has a lot of information so that you can see what all the little codes are on those census records, because there are so many little codes on census records that we overlook. For example, the 1950, the newest one, the 1950 census record has notes that people ignore.
John Brandt:S-T-E-V-E-M-O-R-S-E dot O-R-G. That is correct, and it looks like a massive list of just a bunch of stuff to maybe click on in research.
Kathleen Brandt:Yes, but he also tells you what all the codes mean, because we don't necessarily know the codes, we also can go back and look up the actual instructions.
John Brandt:You mean we as researchers, right.
Kathleen Brandt:We, as in everyone listening to this podcast.
John Brandt:Okay, thank you.
Kathleen Brandt:They can look up the instructor, the instructions to the census takers, and that will help them understand what the blanks are for and how to use them and what special codes are on there that they're overlooking.
John Brandt:And then there's also, of course, census. gov.
Kathleen Brandt:Census. gov also, sure, and archives. gov is really the one I would go to.
John Brandt:Archives. gov. Okay, a-r-c-h-i-v-e-s. gov.
Kathleen Brandt:Yes.
John Brandt:Okay, okay.
Kathleen Brandt:Those are going to be three great resources for a research, and I have another one that I want to make sure I mention, and that is the A3 Genealogy Blog. Oh, the A3 Genealogy.
John Brandt:Do tell us about the A3 Genealogy Blog, Kathleen.
Kathleen Brandt:There are a lot of articles on census records and researching and really digging out this little tidbits of things that we might have over so probably very, very interesting information that everybody should spend some time digging through.
John Brandt:Absolutely, absolutely On the show. Yeah, do you have anything you want to add about the census? Because I feel much more knowledgeable and I feel I have learned a lot in this session.
Kathleen Brandt:Well.
John Brandt:Uh-oh, here we go.
Kathleen Brandt:I just want to remind people that census records although the federal census records, start with 1790. There are colonial also records that we should be looking at, especially in Virginia, Louisiana, New York.
John Brandt:And there are census that have been taken in other countries as well. Absolutely so that when you're going to hit a point if we're primarily immigrants, at a certain point you're jumping back and you better brush up on your German or your Swedish or whatever.
Kathleen Brandt:Yes, I believe the Swedish were one of the first to have census records.
John Brandt:Okay, we're jumping back right now because we're laughing, because I had to cut an entire section out that was completely inappropriate for anything that we were talking about, but now we're wrapping up, so we don't have I don't have anything else. Do you have anything else? I do not, john. Well, that's wonderful, because we can get on with the rest of this day. You can get back to your research, which I know you're just dying to jump back into Actually, I am and we'll catch up again a little bit later.
Kathleen Brandt:All right love.
John Brandt:Thanks, Kathleen.
Kathleen Brandt:I appreciate it, thanks, bye-bye.
John Brandt:Well, congratulations, you've made it to the end of another episode. Thanks so much for staying. Thanks to Chewy Chewbacca Brandt, our part time AI programmer and full time cheese tax collector, for his unwavering lack of interest in anything we're doing. The theme song for Hitting the Bricks was written and performed by Tony Fistknuckle and the Rotifers Watch for their next appearance in Mansfield Park. You can find us on Apple, spotify, youtube and, of course, buzzsprout. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast, so stop by our Facebook page at Hitting the Bricks and let us know.
