PAT -
Transcribing a census means reading information on cursive-written pages
that were microfilmed.
The information is organized by census districts, meaning counties and
regions and towns within the counties.
The data include at least a head of household's name, the names of other
residents and their ages. The other information for each person can be: for
an older census, a couple more items, like where they were born, where their
parents were born, etc; for a more recent census, many more items, adding up
to over two dozen. You can get an idea of what is included, and therefore
the scope of the work, for each census, by looking at a blank census form
for the year you are interested in. These forms are available online at
family history or genealogy library web sites I believe, or perhaps it was
Cindy's web site - not sure. As an example, in a 1910 census of Kosciusko
Cnty, there are 32 columns of data for each person, with perhaps 3/4 of them
filled out. Each page has 47 rows (people listed). There are approximately
(I'm guessing from my viewing of the census) a couple hundred of these
pages - perhaps less. The older census are less populated, of course.
All of this data is written in oldy handwriting, some very well done, some
lousy. Some microfilms were photographed well, some not so well. Some
original census pages were fine when microfilmed, some were smudged, or
stained, or written in light ink, etc, etc.
It is fun, regardless.
Kerry Butler
kbutler(a)biztech.net
-----Original Message-----
From: Pat <pattycake(a)gis.net>
To: INKOSCIU-L(a)rootsweb.com <INKOSCIU-L(a)rootsweb.com>
Date: Thursday, December 30, 1999 10:18 PM
Subject: Re: [INKOSCIU] CENSUS
What is involved in transcribing a census? I'd like to help but I
work
full-time so I'd like to find out how involved this is.
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