No, the Census Bureau does not have a genealogical research staff, nor does it compile family histories. It can provide certain personal information from the 1910 and later Federal census records, but only upon request by the named individuals or to persons specifically authorized by them.
If you need a 1910 or 1920 census transcript because you are unable to copy the record locally, of if you want a transcript of census records from 1930 on, you should request a BC-600 Application for Search of Census Records, P.O. Box 1545, Jeffersonville, IN 47131, 812-285-5314. A fee is required for the search.
1.2 WHERE CAN I FIND CENSUS DATA FOR GENEALOGICAL RESEARCH?
Governments count their citizens and the citizens' property at regular intervals in order to collect information pertaining to taxation and to the assigning of representation in Congress. By law, for reasons of privacy, this information is released as summary statistics during the years immediately following the enumeration with no identification of individuals or individual businesses. Information published about the 1990 Census is just that - summary data. You will not find your family in that data.
By law, for archival purposes, information collected from businesses becomes available to the public after 30 years. Information collected from individuals is released after 72 years. Thus, the 1920 census is the most recent to have been released to the public.
Copies of decennial census forms from 1790 through 1920 are available,
usually on microfilm, for research at the United States National
Archives in Washington, DC, at Archives regional centers, and at select
depository libraries throughout the United States. They can be borrowed
from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) Family
History Library in Salt Lake City through their many LDS Family History
Centers and from almost any library. They can also be rented directly
from the National Archives:
Indexes of names (by state) are available for all states only through the 1850 census. Select states have been indexed for years after 1850, and more indexes are in progress. These indexes are available at many libraries and many are available now on CD-ROM from commercial vendors.
Federal population censuses have been taken every ten years beginning with 1790 for every state in existence at the time of the census. A few states took an interdecennial census in 1885. A complete summary of federal population census dates and descriptions of contents is contained in Arlene Eakle and Johni Cerny ed., "THE SOURCE: A Guidebook of American Genealogy", (Salt Lake City: Ancestry, 1984). This book will tell you where to find all sorts of American records to aid you in your research.
Through 1840, only heads of household were named. Beginning with 1850, all household members are identified by name, age, sex, occupation, and birthplace. Starting in 1880, the birth country of parents is shown. From 1890 on, an indication of whether naturalization papers have been taken out is listed. See "The Source", cited above for more complete information.
The original enumeration schedules for 1800-1880 are held by the National Archives in Wash. DC
1850, 1860, and 1870 : The law required three copies of the Census. Original to the County Clerk; one to the Secretary of the Interior (who ran the Census Office); one to the state's Secretary of State.
1880 : The law required ONE copy of the full census and a name list which contained ONLY Name, Age, Sex and Color. This name list was to be deposited with the County Clerk.
1890 : The law required ONE copy of the full census. It permitted Name Lists to be made Upon the Request of a local official. [N.B.: List was NOT made until it was requested.]
A (non-copyrighted) book published by the National Archives (Guide to Genealogical Research in the National Archives) has information about the different censuses. It is widely available in libraries and can be ordered from the Government Printing Office.
The 1890 Census was almost entirely lost in a fire. Records remain only for a few townships in a few counties in a few states. The surviving lists are on three rolls of microfilm, and a comprehensive index is available.
Some people may be able to find their ancestors in a special census taken that same year of Civil War soldiers or their widows. These censuses are available from the National Archives, FHL/FHCs, and other outlets that have the other federal censuses.
The kind of data desired by genealogists, the individual entries recorded by the census taker, generally is not available on the Internet.
Microfilm contains copies of the original handwritten records. It is analog (graphical) data, not digital information. Graphical scanned (handwritten) records could be shown now, though the files created from these are very large in comparison to text, but until character recognition software improves greatly, they can not be digitized for indexing and searching.
The Census Bureau has no plans to put historical data online.
Some individuals, however, have been experimenting with scanning census images to be stored on CD-ROM. If this is to be widely done, it will have to become economically attractive as a commercial enterprise and, if put on the Internet at all, would probably be subject to a fee for use.
Speculating about what cannot be done in the future is pretty foolhardy when one looks the advances in the technology brought to us in the past few months.
Searching for your ancestor requires finding the proper record on the proper microfilm. Since most of this data was collected by census takers going door to door and asking questions of the person answering the door, records are in order of location on a street, and are not sorted in an easily searched fashion.
However, most censuses have been indexed. From 1790-1850 there are published printed indexes of heads of households for each state. From 1860-1880 the availability of indexes depends on the state. The 1880 Census is being indexed for the entire country by the Genealogical Society of Utah.
One problem with indexing the names is that there are so many spellings and mis-spellings of the same name. Schemes to group like names together are useful in organizing these indexes.
Soundex is a method of categorizing names by the way they might sound (when pronounced in English), lumping together similar consonants. The result is a four-digit code (one letter followed by three numbers). The Soundex code is used to index names by state for some censuses.
There is an 1880 Soundex only for heads of families who had children 10 years of age and younger. The 1900 Soundex is the result of a WPA project, and is complete for the country. Soundex or Miracode indexes exist for only 21 states in 1910. Miracode uses the Soundex coding but includes slightly different information. The 1920 Census was completely Soundexed.
The Soundexes are on microfilm. You need to find the name first on the Soundex microfilm, and get the information there to use to ask for the film with the actual record.
You will find additional information in a separate document on this board about how to use Soundex. You can also find this on some of the WWW pages referenced here.