Lesson 2: Genealogy Resources

My family has done quite a lot of genealogical research on my maternal line, so I wasn't expecting to find anything new. We already have the census data available, but it was fun to search for it again, as I haven't looked at it in a few years. Plus, it was also a good test of HeritageQuest to see if the information we have is really included in this database.

Here is a snip from the 1920 Skamania County, Washington census with my great-grandfather (Jacob Horn) and family listed. My grandmother wasn't born yet, so she is not listed. It was interesting to see the next household, which were also my relatives--Isabella Underwood was my great-great-great grandmother. I didn't realize that these six people were living in the same household--I'll have to ask my mom about that. I'm glad I learned that only Heads of Household are indexed in HeritageQuest census records--this explains why I wasn't finding certain people I knew were on the census.

I also looked in the book and PERSI collections, but didn't find anything new. (One can always hope!) There are several publications that include my ancestors, though, so it was fun to see them online. (We only have photocopies of some of these publications.)

I knew that the 1890 census records had been destroyed by fire, but I didn't realize that any records had survived at all, which is so nice for people researching in those states/counties. It's so sad to think of the loss of all that information, especially when I remember how exciting it was to find information about my own family members on census records.

It looks like Alaska wasn't included in the federal census until 1900. I looked at the 1900 census records for Yakutat--the lower left side of each page is all black, obliterating some of the information--very unfortunate.