This Friday I have a fantastic book to recommend from a well known genealogy book author, William Dollarhide. I have this book on my genealogy reference bookshelf and refer to it often.
Substitutes for the Lost 1890 U.S. Federal Census
Author: William Dollarhide
Publisher:
Family Roots Publishing Co.www.familyrootspublishing.com
Publication Year: 2019
Pages: 101
ISBN: 978-1-62859-254-2
Amazon Link:
https://amzn.to/3KuWVne
Genealogists everywhere are always
looking for record sources to document their ancestors that would have been
recorded in the 1890 U.S. Federal Population Census. Due to the fact that the
majority of this particular census was destroyed by fire in 1921, census
substitutes play a key role.
According to the publisher
“This is the first comprehensive guide to substitutes for the lost 1890 U.S.
Federal Census ever compiled”. The author, William Dollarhide, is well known as
the co-author and cartographer of Map
Guide to the U.S. Federal Censuses. Dollardhide does not disappoint with
this new work.
This new book is chocked full
of great information and guidance to the reader on finding our ancestors
without the help of the 1890 census. Dollarhide explains “All 1,203 database titles
listed in this review were extracted from the series of state books, Censuses
& Substitute Name Lists” One of the first things Dollarhide covers is the
history of the 1890 census, how it was enumerated and its fate.
The “National Name Lists 65
major U.S. databases identified in the National Name Lists section came from
one of the following categories: National Vital Records Lists, Immigration
Lists, U.S. Military Lists, Veterans and Pensioners Lists, State Name Lists,
State & Territory Census Records, State and County Court Records,
Directories, State Militia Lists, Tax Lists and Vital Records Lists.” This is a
pretty comprehensive collection of resources.
The remainder of the book is
filled with resources pointing the genealogist to online databases and websites
that will help us find our ancestors in spite of the loss of the 1890 census.
Dollarhide gives us the name of the record source, a brief description and then
the internet link to take us to the actual website. The author begins with a
chapter on National Name Lists of Major
U.S. Databases for the Period 1885-1895. Starting on page 21, Dollarhide
addresses these names list sites by U.S. State beginning with Alabama and
ending with Wyoming. The reader can read through each state or you can flip
right to the state where you are doing research and see what databases are
listed.
Since Tennessee is my area of
expertise, I flipped over to that section and found some well known and not so
well known databases, websites and digitized records for the state of Tennessee.
These resources for information and records not only cover the year 1890 but
for the most part several years before and after that particular year. I was
especially glad to see references to Family Search databases that are not
indexed but are only browsable and include actual digitized records.
Included on almost every page
are actual examples of the documents that can be found at the databases that
Dollarhide shares with us. These are records like state census records, early
tax lists, marriage indexes and directory listings just to name a few. On page
2 of the book is a handy table of State Censuses by state dating from
1884-1896. This table lets the reader know which states had state census and
what year those censuses were taken. This table is a great quick reference for
the researcher to use as they are conducting their genealogy research.
This volume is one of those
books that the genealogist would do well to keep at arm’s reach while
conducting genealogy research. This is a quick reference guide that should be
part of our genealogy resource book collection.
(This review was originally published in the FGS FORUM, Vol. 32, No. 2, Summer 2020)
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