GenealogyBlog

The following information was received this morning from Paul Nauta with FamilySearch:
There were over 150 new collections added or enhanced this week at FamilySearch.org. FamilySearch volunteers indexed over 120 million records — over 300 million new names — from original source documents to accomplish this great feat. The massive release was announced [...]

Two years from today - April 2, 2012 - the National Archives will release the 1940 census to the public. According to the National Archives website: http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/census/1940/general-info.html , the plan is that the census will be digitized and available at the Archives and online on that day. Note that April 1 will be a Sunday, [...]

It’s April 1. This is the Federal Census Day. That’s a rare occurrence in America. It’s only happened 23 times thus far, the first being in 1790 (that was before I was born).
The census days have been as follows:

1790: August 2 (first Monday in August)
1800: August 4 (first Monday in August)
1810: August 6 (first Monday [...]

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. - Authorities say the strange odor seeping into a western Colorado Census Bureau office came from more than 1,000 marijuana plants growing next door.
Grand Junction census workers say the smell was coming through the vents. Police got a search warrant Tuesday and found the plants next door in the same [...]

The following data is from The U.S. Census Bureau’s Facts for Features:
This year, America conducts its 23rd census. The nation’s largest domestic mobilization began in a remote corner of Alaska and will continue throughout the rest of the country - and in Puerto Rico and the Island Areas (American Samoa, Commonwealth of the [...]

Some ethnic groups are questioning the dropping of questions about folk’s ancestry in the 2010 census. Money is involved… Following is an excerpt from an article in the December 31, 2009 edition of Vindy.com. Note that race questions are included. Question 8 asks about Hispanic Origins, while Question 9 also deals with race. However, the [...]

Family Roots Publishing is now offering Dollarhide’s new “Census Substitutes and States Census Records” as a package of the two volumes.
In this two volume series, acclaimed author William Dollarhide identifies Census Substitutes, as well as State Census Records for the United States of America. The substitutes are those name lists derived from tax lists, [...]

The following news release was prepared by Justin Schroepfer, Marketing Director for Footnote.com.
OCTOBER 29, 2009 - LINDON, Utah: Today Footnote.com (http://www.footnote.com) announced it will digitize and create a searchable database for all publicly available U.S. Federal Censuses ranging from the first U.S. Census taken in 1790 to the most current public census [...]

U.S. residents are being encouraged to fill out those census forms when we get them - and not wait until someone shows up at the door, because we didn’t get around to answering those 10 questions. Following is an excerpt from an article about the topic.
Ten years ago, said Gentry, who is the LCO [...]

They say it will only be 10 questions - and take about minutes to complete. Let’s hope those ten questions are genealogically useful in 2082.
According to the Census 2010 Newsletter, the scope of the operation includes counting nearly 310 million people within a few months, delivering more than 134 million questionnaires, managing almost [...]

I ran onto an article about the upcoming census in a newspaper while eating dinner at a restaurant in Redding, California this evening. It looks to me like an all-out effort is about to be untaken to make sure that the 2010 Federal Decennial census questionnaire is read, answered, and the data collected as accurately [...]

The following Content Updates are from Gary Gibb, VP U.S. Content at Ancestry.com. This information was included in an email received October 6, 2009 from Anastasia Tyler, PR and Events Manager.
The following collections are coming soon to Ancestry.com:

Improved U.S. Census Collection (1790-1840)
Description: Ancestry.com will be release all of the early census years with [...]

In browsing the blogs this evening, I ran across an interesting article called “Filling in That 10-Year Gap,” by Allison Aston at The ProGenealogists Blog. Allison writes about a family whose children were in an orphanage for a period of time following the death of their mother. So when located in the 1900 [...]

28 September 2009: Volunteers with Rhode Island roots will be excited about the new indexing projects this week. The Rhode Island 1905 and 1935 State Censuses were added. New international projects for Argentina, Germany, Philippines, Spain, and the U.K. were also added.
Note: the links within the charts won’t work as they are just images [...]

The following news release is courtesy of Paul Nauta, FamilySearch:
28 September 2009 - Family researchers seeking their Mexican heritage have two million new records at their fingertips this week with an update to the 1930 Census collection. There are also new indexes and images for France, Italy, Slovakia, Argentina, and the United States. These [...]