As Michael mentions in today’s article, when searching for census records, it is helpful to have the estimated ages for the ancestors you are researching. Create a grid for each family with estimated birth dates and ages for each family member. See a sample in the Ancestry.com Library. Â
I like the idea of your table and I realise that the way that you have laid out the grid, with 2 lines per person, makes it easier to look at on screen and also to print. However I always think that if you are using something like a spreadsheet then if you can keep everything belonging to one person on one line (even though that makes it a very long line) then you can use the ‘power’ of the program to look at the results in different ways such as using ‘sort’ to produce a ‘to do list’ of people who require look ups in the 1860 census, or a list of people who have died prior to 1880, etc.
This is a great idea and one I will start using……..thanks for sharing. It certainly will make things easier to see if we are actually dealing with the right family.
I have used a similar table(see below) for many years. I put all the information I have and obtain from census searches on one line for each person. If they conflict, I show both. Having the baseline date of the census and the person’s birthdate allows for a more accurate computation of age at time of census.
CENSUS YEAR 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930
CENSUS DATE 6/1 6/1 4/15 1/1 4/1
NAME BIRTH DATE AGE AGE AGE AGE AGE
Fabulous idea! I am a table user because tables organize information so well. This is an excellent way to summarize census info and I will definitely start using this format.
A couple of months ago I was trying to sort out my ancesters by age, but because so many of them had the same name, I didn’t know “who” was “was”. (Pre all-family names listed)
So I made the age chart to help me sort these people by DOB, DOD (so I knew when to end a search for someone) and census years, State & County.
After looking at the Census Grid and #3 comments, I saw info I should add into my homemade chart that I hadn’t thought of yet.
I did this chart using a format for a full page 8″1/2x 11″ and a post card 4×6 (for each individual) which my printer will print very nicely.
Kudo’s to Excel user’s.