"Duplicate Originals" of the Federal Censuses

29 June 2014

It's a frustration we all know much too well in our census research. Whether we use an online provider of digital images or consult the "old timey" microfilm, we find the needed county and state, search for our person of interest, and find nobody by that name. In fact, we find nobody with names—at least not given names. Page after page, there's nothing but initials—not just for heads of households, not just for grown males who may have preferred to be called I.J. rather than Ichabod Jehosophat, but for wives and children to boot.

What's the problem? What's the fix?

The problem is: we're not using the original census return. We don't have the actual pages the census taker filled out at the kitchen table or the door stoop. What we are viewing on film or online is the federal copy of the census taken in those pre-Xerox days when the enumerator instructions called for multiple copies to be made. If we were that census taker, faced with the task of recopying dozens or hundreds of pages, twice over, we, too, might be tempted to settle for using everybody's initials.

In the United States, multiple copies were created for most of the first ten decennial censuses. In various years, preliminary copies were posted locally, while official copies were to be sent to specific offices—typically one with the state's secretary of state, and one with the Census Bureau. In the years that required multiple official copies, each is considered a "duplicate original."

When and where we find them, local copies may arrange entries differently from state and federal "duplicates." In some years, the actual form used locally differed from those sent to state and federal authorities. In many times and places, enumerators motivated by "sensitive issues" in their community would omit details from the copy that would be posted locally but include them on the state or the federal return. Conversely, enumerators with grudges against someone in their neighborhood have been known to record false information on the federal return—statements that would be considered calumous in their society—while reporting the correct facts on the local return that the target of their ire might easily access.

Our bottom line? Thorough researchers make the effort to consult all copies that have survived, because many of those duplicates often did not duplicate each other.

IMAGE SOURCE: 1850 U.S. Census, Trimble County, Kentucky, population schedule, 1st District, (stamped) p. 404 verso; accessed through "United States Census, 1850," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-267-12128-272585-67?cc=1401638 : accessed 18 June 2014), path: Kentucky > Trimble > Trimble > image 47 of 116; citing NARA microfilm publication M432.