Well, Daniel, I can't speak for the on-line 1880 census, but I did purchase
the CD's that LDS made available a year or two ago. You can narrow a search
down somewhat from just a name. You can specify race, place of birth (state
or country), and state of enumeration, and date of birth within a ten-year
range if you know that criteria. So you don't necessarilly have to get a
list of all the Sam Smiths in the country.
There are problems, of course. Some of the people I've been trying to
locate just used a first initial for their first name, then a full middle
name, thereby going by their middle name. For some reason, the search
function doesn't like initials for First Name. That's just a "for
instance." But hey, its better than what we had.
The data the CD's gave me was limited -- not all of the data categories
that were in the 1880 census are in the database. However, if you pair the
information with microfilm or scanned images available from Ancestry.com,
you have a good research tool.
Cathy Spude
"Daniel H.
Weiskotten" To: [log in to unmask]
<weiskotten@EROLS cc:
.COM> Subject: Re: 1880s U.S. Census now online
Sent by:
HISTORICAL
ARCHAEOLOGY
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>
10/29/02 11:31 PM
EST
Please respond to
HISTORICAL
ARCHAEOLOGY
Too bad that you have to know the name that you are searching in order to
find it - pity the poor person looking for Sam Smith.
It would be an incredible resource if you could easily look at all the
names for a particular enumeration district, could search by other fields
or do bolean searches with keywords. Right now it is great for
genealogists, but very difficult for the myriad of other disciplines that
would find it invaluable.
Does anyone have contacts with the LDS to see about expanding their search
capabilities?
This is the first census index that I have found that actually has the
information right on the money, as given in the original records. Census
indexes are usually so bad as to be nearly worthless, but I've checked this
LDS index of 1880 for the usual favorite names and a couple dozen others I
know and found no errors at all.
Dan W.
At 10/29/02 12:11 PM, you wrote:
>Volunteers from the Mormon Church have just placed the U.S. 1880's census
>online at http://www.familysearch.org
>
>It took nearly 17 years of input to produce this database, which is
>significant in that it includes entries for former slaves.
>
>
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