14 July 2008

Partial 1870 Census Index Online at FamilySearch Labs

I got all excited until I read the fine print. The subject lines on many of the emails floating around about this topic aren't exactly precise.

FamilySearch is adding the 1870 Census to its website. Cool. Right now, though, it is incomplete. I got all exited a little too early.

From Tom Kemp's GenealogyBank Blog:

"The 1870 census is available in two formats:

Indexed and Searchable - search every name in the census for these States:
at the time of this writing only for the states of Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Dakota Territory, Delaware,District of Columbia, Florida, Idaho, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Utah.

Browsable - lets you look at the images of each page in the census --at this writing available for all states except Kentucky, Vermont and Virginia. "

I'll take a look at the 1870 Adams County, Illinois Census for Northeast Township. It is VERY difficult to read on the microfilm. Ancestry improved the images, but they are still a little gray. I'm waiting for the index to be complete--maybe then I can find my Johann/John/Jann Ufkes who proves to be elusive in 1870! It always is great to have separate indexes to the same record---sometimes someone else reads something differently.