Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every couple of weeks on a small topic that pops into my head. This one can be very helpful for census research.
Read the instructions to enumerators
When you’re processing a U.S. census record, it’s tempting to record the big information, like birth year and place and occupation, and leave it at that. But there are lots of other pieces of information that you can capture, which can vary by census year. Sometimes it’s not easy to understand exactly what the word or code written in a column refers to, and that’s where the instructions to enumerators come in.
Whenever I take the time to read the instructions, I benefit. They’re easy to find on the historical instructions page on U.S. Census website or a simple google search like “instructions to enumerators 1910 census” will take you right there. In my experience, the quality of the work of enumerators is variable, so we don’t know for a fact that the enumerator followed the instructions precisely. But at least we can find out what the answer is supposed to mean!
Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash
Great idea that I don’t usually follow. Thanks for the reminder.
Glad it was helpful, Kay!
Great tip!! I’m getting ready for the 1921 England census (which will be released on FMP on 6 Jan 2022) and have downloaded the instructions 🙂 Quite fascinating reading.
Great tip, Janine! Thanks for suggesting it.