Family Historian User Group

Anyone tried using Ancestral Sources to load US census records? How'd it go?

ID:5941

Overloaded,

I've loaded quite a few US Censuses using Ancestral Sources.  I've loaded ones for the US Cenus, the Iowa State Census, The Minnesota State Census, and the Wisconsin State Census.

I had to tailor some of the US census templates because they didn't match up the way I liked with the US census forms.  I created new templates for the Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin cenuses.

All in all it works extremely well.  It wasn't hard to update and create templates.

Bill

Sorry -
Is there a download for those templates? I haven't been able to find it.

Thanks!

The standard USA Census templates are built into AS.
Bill may be prepared to upload his amendments, but editing the templates to create new ones is not too difficult, and there is a Census Grid Templates tutorial among all the other AS tutorials.

Overloaded,

I have not uploaded them to the site, but I'd be happy to share.  Would you want just the USA template info or also the template info for Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota?

Bill

I decided to just go ahead and share what I have.

To that end I put out separate census template files for the USA, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Norway.

These are now in the Downloads area under Ancestral Sources.

Let me know if you find anything wrong with any of the templates.

**** There seems to be a problem with the download links. Not sure what happened. I'll try to get it fixed. ***

Bill

I had a similar problem uploading my IOM templates and icon files. They were too big, but there was no warning, just nothing seemed to work.

Thanks for the hint. I notified Jane and hopefully she will be able to straighten things out.

Bill

Since I was unable to get them uploaded, Jane put the census templates out in the download section under Ancestral Sources for me.  Thanks Jane!

There are templates for the USA, the states of Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and for Norway.  For Iowa there is also one for the short form that sometimes was used for the 1905 census.

The USA templates are modified versions of the ones that come with Ancestral Sources with changes to fields, values, and field lengths to match up with what I am coming across when I look at USA censuses.

The state and Norway censuses are new.

If you see anything that is wrong or that can be improved upon, please let me know.

Bill

The Bills Iowa Census Templates download file has no file type and is faulty.
Its contents is:


Warning:  readfile(fileupload/Bills_Iowa_Census_Templates) [function.readfile]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/janetaub/public_html/fhug/pushfile.php on line 9



In due course, over the next few days, I plan to add these templates to the Knowledge Base of FHUG Downloads for Ancestral Sources with screen-shots, etc.

I think I have fixed the Iowa one. Are the others OK?

Yes, all OK.

Note that the Iowa Templates include the Iowa (short) 1905 Template, so it is not really needed separately.

Mike,

I forgot that I included it in the Iowa one.

Jane... maybe to make it less confusing we should eliminate the Iowa (Short) file from the downloads.

Thanks,

Bill

Thanks, all.

I've busily been entering English & US (Federal) census records. I do have a couple of Iowa records (isn't 1925 a dream for a genealogist?),

BUT
I have suddenly found another question:

Where does all the wonderful census info go? For instance, I have a g'g'uncle who's birth year (stated or estimated) seems to change with each record found. I'm still not sure if he was older or younger than my g'grandfather!

How can I retrieve all the birth years/ages stated in the censuses?

Or if I wanted to create a report of a woman's stated number of children born/number living, and list the children she did have - how can I access the info that was stated in the 1900 census?

Thanks again. Things are starting to go more smoothly.

This page in the Knowledge Base might help to understand where the data goes. It is part of a larger tutorial that Tatewise put together:

http://www.fhug.org.uk/wiki/doku.php?id ... _historian

When you save your census entries you will be given options to edit births facts, create new ones or leave them as they are. If you do add or amend a birth fact it can be seen in Family Historian but will be linked to the census source via a citation. There is an option (see Tools->Options) to allow AS to create multiple birth events for individuals. Many users would find that too confusing (because obviously people don't really have more than one birth!) but it is a way that you can record these conflicting birth dates if you wish.

Ultimately all of these various births, census records, occupations, etc. are all linked to a source which can have a transcription of the census details so that you can refer to the age or date of birth given in each census.

Regarding the 'children born/number living/died', AS has an option in the Census Template for these three columns, to Append to census event local note.
If this is chosen the column data appears in the Census Event local Note thus:
Completed years the present Marriage has lasted: 12
Total number of Children Born Alive: 5
Total number of Children still Living: 4
Total number of Children who have Died: 1

So you can use the function =GetLabelledText(%INDI.CENS[year=1911].NOTE2%, ”Total number of Children Born Alive:”) to retrieve the data.

I sometimes supplement the automatic AS data with the children's names when known:
Total number of Children Born Alive: 5
Total number of Children still Living: 4            (Margaret, Ada, Joseph, Edith)
Total number of Children who have Died: 1      (Edna)

Additionally, I have created a Custom Attribute called Child Census whose value is 5 born, 4 living, 1 died with the Census Date and Census Citation.