I’m not sure that I can adequately describe the rush of joy and connection that happens when one has been hunting down the family tree, and finally finds them. There they are, all the members of the household listed chronologically perhaps a cousin staying, perhaps a couple missing. Using the census for genealogy is a fascinating and instructive tool. One travels back by decades: where are the kids now? who’s living near the grandparents? what happened to that lost brother? Most of these people were dead before I was born, but they are my family. They are my link to the past. I want to know about their lives. Seeing their names on the census, reading their address and professions makes them real in a completely different way.
I traced my father’s maternal line back 5 generations using the census, discovering siblings and cousins we didn’t know about. We had mysteries in the paternal line. As a baby grandpa lived alone with his mother. Was his father still in London? Why doesn’t he show up on any census (or death record). Look! At 21 Grandpa had a wife (Oh! The birth index shows they had 3 little kids in the next couple of years!) But 2 years later he was in Canada marrying my grandmother and she ended up with 3 kids. What happened there? Oh! He shows up in California on the 1931 US census with another woman! Wow. Grandpa really got around. We wouldn’t know him at all, would have no ideas about these important parts of his life without the census. He hadn’t admitted them in life, but it was important for the family to understand who he was. He had a pattern. It helped understand the sense of loss of childhood abandonment, and it told us that there were 3 other little kids back in England who felt a similar abandonment. These were important connections.
At the moment the Canadian census is being compiled, and they ask you an important question at the very end. Do you want this information available to future generations in 92 years? Choose yes. The joy you will provide the great, great, great grandchildren when they see your names and your mundane information is far more profound than you can conceive. It’s easy to speak to the future, just check the affirmative box.
Shawn L. Bird 
easy infamy May 7, 2011
Tags: census, genealogy, postaday2011
I’m not sure that I can adequately describe the rush of joy and connection that happens when one has been hunting down the family tree, and finally finds them. There they are, all the members of the household listed chronologically perhaps a cousin staying, perhaps a couple missing. Using the census for genealogy is a fascinating and instructive tool. One travels back by decades: where are the kids now? who’s living near the grandparents? what happened to that lost brother? Most of these people were dead before I was born, but they are my family. They are my link to the past. I want to know about their lives. Seeing their names on the census, reading their address and professions makes them real in a completely different way.
I traced my father’s maternal line back 5 generations using the census, discovering siblings and cousins we didn’t know about. We had mysteries in the paternal line. As a baby grandpa lived alone with his mother. Was his father still in London? Why doesn’t he show up on any census (or death record). Look! At 21 Grandpa had a wife (Oh! The birth index shows they had 3 little kids in the next couple of years!) But 2 years later he was in Canada marrying my grandmother and she ended up with 3 kids. What happened there? Oh! He shows up in California on the 1931 US census with another woman! Wow. Grandpa really got around. We wouldn’t know him at all, would have no ideas about these important parts of his life without the census. He hadn’t admitted them in life, but it was important for the family to understand who he was. He had a pattern. It helped understand the sense of loss of childhood abandonment, and it told us that there were 3 other little kids back in England who felt a similar abandonment. These were important connections.
At the moment the Canadian census is being compiled, and they ask you an important question at the very end. Do you want this information available to future generations in 92 years? Choose yes. The joy you will provide the great, great, great grandchildren when they see your names and your mundane information is far more profound than you can conceive. It’s easy to speak to the future, just check the affirmative box.
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