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The population schedules of the fifteen United States federal censuses now available to the public are indubitably the most popular resources for American genealogy.  (The 1930 U.S. census was released only in April 2002; to protect privacy, federal law restricts each census for 72 years.)  Begun in 1790, the decennial federal censuses name the head of every household counted and, since 1850, every dependent.  Genealogists use the U.S. censuses to locate individuals geographically in a given town, county, and state, as well as genealogically within a certain family.  Researchers can thereby pinpoint their searches for vital records, although by giving individuals’ ages, federal censuses provide at least relative years of birth.  A federal census frequently provides the only proof of an individual’s descent, however, and is frequently accepted as a primary record by lineage societies, such as the Daughters of the American Revolution.  The U.S. censuses are therefore a link in the genealogical paper trail between the remarkably complete 17th-century baptism, marriage, and burial records of the American colonies and the even better 20th-century birth, marriage, and death records of county courthouses and state departments of vital statistics.

Although some state censuses did so earlier, the 1880 United States census was the first federal census to name an individual’s relationship to the head of household, as well as the state or country of birth of every individual’s father and mother.  It has heretofore been incompletely indexed, however.  (The Work Projects Administration’s Soundex, compiled to identify individuals who would be eligible for Society Security, included only those households with children 10 years old and under.)  FamilySearch’s 1880 United States Census and National Index on CD-ROM, published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is therefore a monumental help in accessing the data in this important document.

FamilySearch’s 1880 United States Census on CD-ROM contains approximately 50 million names divided by seven regions, all the names of the complete 1880 United States census, and a national index on 56 compact discs in a three-ring binder, including 55 data discs (35 of census, 20 of index) and a single unnumbered disc containing the Family History Resource File Viewer, version 4.0, the Windows software required.

Genealogists have relied for years on the commercial federal census indexes published by Accelerated Indexing Systems and by Precision Indexing.  Locating an individual in the frequently unindexed state censuses, for example, requires knowing where he or she lived, then scanning the many pages of that town’s or county’s schedule for the individual.  Swiftly rolling microfilm insures that genealogy is not for queasy stomachs!  Paper indexes, however, are state specific and most frequently index only heads of household or dependents with a different surname.  The national index and the exponentially enhanced search capabilities of relational databases make the 1880 United States Census and National Index more valuable than conventional paper indexes.

The 1880 United States Census and National Index, however, contains only transcribed records, not the original images.  Such, in fact, is the very difference in full-text databases, like EBSCOhost’s Academic Search Premier, made available to Idaho Libraries by LiLI, between the HTML transcriptions of periodical articles and their PDF page images with illustrations and page numbers, a point I emphasize in information literacy instruction sessions with Idaho State University undergraduates.  Transcriptions contribute the variable of human error and frequently rob researchers of information’s context, as much a legitimate information retrieval device as is indexing or cataloging.  Therefore, just as they must verify with primary sources the data in published genealogies and in the fantastic but nevertheless unverified International Genealogical Index and Ancestral File databases available at the FamilySearch Web site, serious users of the 1880 United States Census and National Index will thereafter want to locate their family’s information on the 1880 federal census microfilm.  The 1880 United States Census and National Index is therefore at best a retrieval tool, which FamilySearch itself seems to have recognized, since the microfilm and page numbers of the original records, as well as the Salt Lake City Family History Library microfilm number, are given with each transcription.

The FamilySearch census, moreover, does not transcribe every detail concerning an individual recorded on the population schedule, such as unemployment, illness, handicap, school attendance, or literacy.  Its value to the growing number of social scientists and other academics using the federal censuses and other genealogical records for research is therefore limited.  Furthermore, there is no Macintosh version and no accompanying manual.

Nevertheless, the resource’s value as an access point to the microfilmed population schedules of the 1880 United States census is unsurpassed.  Few libraries, let alone individuals, of course, can afford the price and storage space of any complete federal census on microfilm.  The 1880 United States Census and National Index, however, costs only $49 and can be purchased via the FamilySearch Web site:  http://www.familysearch.org.  Because of its affordability, its remarkable searchability, and genealogy’s popularity (genealogy is the second most searched-for subject on the World Wide Web), I highly recommended this resource for any public or academic library.

(Idaho Librarian readers interested in the history and details of the various United States censuses should read Loretto Dennis Szucs’s “Research in Census Records,” chapter 5 in The Source:  A Guidebook of American Genealogy, rev. ed. [Salt Lake City:  Ancestry, 1997], pp. 102-46, the best reference work, in my opinion, on American genealogy.)