Nebraska State Census, 1860-1885 Is Now Online


The following post is from guest blogger Suzanne Russo Adams.  Suzanne is the Ancestry.com Society Partnership Manager.

 

About a year ago, I made a phone call to Floyd Smith III, President of the Nebraska State Genealogical Society and asked if this society would be interested in partnering with the Ancestry World Archives Project to index several early Nebraska state censuses.  Floyd enthusiastically informed me that my call was a serendipitous event.  The society had just been looking at ways to digitize and index copies of the very same censuses.

 

At the same time, leadership in the Bismarck-Mandan Historical and Genealogical Society approached Anna Fechter about possible project sponsorships.  The Nebraska State Census project caught their attention as well.

 

Arrangements were quickly made for both groups to be among the first society partnership sponsors of active Ancestry World Archives Project collections.  Since then dozens of other societies have signed on to sponsor other projects, collectively rallying their memberships in the efforts of keying and arbitrating these valuable genealogical records.  Some of you may belong to one or more of these 30+ societies and are contributing on their behalf.  Thank you so much for your contributions!

 

Today I am excited to announce that thanks to your hard work and effort, and with special thanks to the members of the Nebraska and Bismarck societies, the Nebraska State Census, 1860-1885 collection, containing over 950,000 records, is now online.

 

The Nebraska State Genealogical Society is thrilled to have had the chance to work with a team with such high, professional standards as those displayed at Ancestry.com.  It is with our combined vision that we were able to accomplish so much with very little resistance.  We are confident that the relationship we have fostered will prove to be mutually beneficial for years to come.  We are equally confident that current and future generations will continue to build upon the efforts and insight of both organizations.  Although the Nebraska State Census project has come to a close, we at the Nebraska State Genealogical Society are already looking forward to the next project.”

(Floyd Smith III, President, Nebraska State Genealogical Society)

 

I want to take this opportunity to whole-heartedly thank the Nebraska State Genealogical Society and the Bismarck-Mandan Historical and Genealogical Society for their diligent participation and partnership.  This is the very first sponsored dataset to be released live on Ancestry.com.  As you can see, great things happen when forces combine to preserve and share records for generations to come.  We hope this leads to many more successful partnerships with other genealogical and historical societies.

 

To see the list of other Ancestry World Archives Project Partners click here.  For more information about partnering with us please contact us at projectpartners@ancestry.com.

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Reader Comments

Excited to see this project posteds! It was the first keying effort for me when I joined the project as a volunteer. It gave me more empathy for the hard work done by other indexers because some of the handwriting was hard to decipher. I’m more tolerant now of mistakes that I find when I’m researching my family lines.

Congratulations to everybody who worked on this project.(I didn’t)Great job all.

It would be really interesting to know how many Ancestry users attach a record done by the WAP to a person in their tree.
I’m sure the Nebraska State Census will get alot of interest from researchers.

A great incentive to carry on keying.

It truly IS exciting to see your work posted knowing that it will help so many people. I worked on this project and had the honor of keying my 3rd great grandfather, Charles Minney, and his family. I just wish they would post the images so we can learn more. My 2nd great grandmother was also in Nebraska at the time, and because of this index, I learned about a child I never knew existed. I just wish I could see that image to learn more. Thank you to everyone for all your hard work!

Great seeing this project online. Found several cousins in it already that had migrated to Nebraska from Canada and had been unable to locate them previously. Also found the names of children that I had missed.

I am very thankful for these censuses. I have found my family in Cass County, Nebraska over the course of several of these census records. Thanks.

Exciting to see this state census. Are other Sate censuses out there, not filmed or known about from the 1800’s and early 1900’s?