All Present?

It’s easy to imagine our ancestors in situations that are unrealistic for them.  Many have seen the picture of the census taker visiting a family with mom, dad, and all the kids gathered around.  Unfortunately, this was rarely the case.  More realistic is that dad was gone in the early morning, the kids may have been in school, doing chores, or working themselves.  Very often mom was working in the home or also doing chores.  Everyone had a different schedule.

This reality is one reason the age and sex columns on the census returns may be different from one decade to the next.  We would like to see little Suzie’s age go from 2 to 12 to 22 on the census but often that did not happen.

Whose Kids Are These?

Another reason these columns can be wrong is the size of the family.  The average number of children in today’s families is just under 2 according to Statista.  But for our ancestors, especially those from the 1800s, often the number of children would be over ten. 

Time Consciousness

Then there’s the fact that celebrating birthdays started during the 1900s.  Before that mainstream society was not as time conscience as we are today.  According to an article in The Oakland Post it wasn’t until society shifted from being based on agriculture to mechanization that we became acutely aware of schedules and dates on the calendar.

So instead of that family gathered around the census taker supplying them with all their needed information, picture a mom gathering eggs or working in the yard, trying to remember her twelve children’s names and ages in order, meanwhile wishing this person would let her get back to work.  Worse yet, what if the person supplying the information was the family’s eight year old son?

At Heroes of the Past we have navigated hundreds of census documents and are familiar with how the enumerators worked and the circumstances in which they worked.  Contact us for all your census needs today!