Monday, June 9, 2008

U.S. 1890 Census where are you?

When I first started tracing my dad's ancestors back in time from him, I repeatedly came up against a problem when I wanted 1890 census data. There's a good reason I had trouble. On January 10, 1921, a fire in the Commerce Department building, Washington, DC, resulted in the destruction of most of the 1890 census, to the woe of researchers ever since. For more detailed information, see Kellee Blake, "'First in the Path of the Firemen:' The Fate of the 1890 Population Census," Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 64-81 (Spring 1996), Part 1 and Part 2.

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