Make certain you’ve located your relative in every extant census record for censuses taken during their life time. This may seem like basic advice, but it can be easy to overlook a census year. For those enumerations where you cannot find the ancestor, indicate where and how you have looked. People do get overlooked in the census, but your notes should always include a comment indicating that you did try and find the person.
We’ve added “during their lifetime” to this tip because I have had people try and locate someone in a census only to discover that the person died several years before that census was taken. Being dead makes it difficult to be enumerated in a census–except for mortality census schedules.
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I found that for the censuses from 1850 through 1880 people who died between the first of June and the day the enumerator came to the home were to be enumerated and treated on the census as if living. Children born during that same period of time were not to be counted. This information is available in a downloadable pdf available on the census website called “Measuring America,” which gives the instructions for each census that were given to the census takers. I had an ancestor who died on June 11, 1850, according to his widow’s pension application, and was counted as though living. I’ve seen at least one other where the census taker wrote dead in the column that usually gives illnesses.
Good reminder. Census questions were to be answered “as of the census date” no matter when the enumerator actually knocked on the door and asked questions.