Genealogy Lesson #18: End of Working with the Census and Introducing Vital Records

First, here are the answers to the scavenger hunt questions from lesson #17 posted on Tuesday, April 21, 2020.

Looking in the 1850 Census:

1. Where is the family of Leonard and Lydia Losee living in 1850?

• Leonard and Lydia Losee were living in Huntington, not Freeport Long Island. Huntington is a town on the North Shore of Long Island while Freeport is on the South Shore.

2. What is Leonard’s occupation?

• In the 1850 census Leonard’s occupation is listed as Hotel Keeper as opposed to Fisherman in the 1860 census.

3. Name the children living with Leonard and Lydia?

• Three children are living with Leonard and Lydia Losee. Mary J. Losee (age 10), John M. Losee (age 9), and Theodore Bennett (age 2)

Who the heck is Theodore Bennett and where are the children from the 1860 census that should be in the 1850 census, Benjamin F. Losee (should be age 7), Leander Losee (should be age 5)? These questions remain unanswered for me. 

One good records often answers some questions but stirs a few more.

What we have learned through using the census, though, is that it helps genealogists to see a family line evolve. It helps us to move back through time watching parents regress to children, as it were, and their parents become children as well. 

The census groups together family sets that we can watch grow and diminish, separate and come together. It is a handy, handy tool for genealogists. A tool that was not created for the needs of genealogists but one we most certainly benefit from. So fill out your 2020 census for the sake of generations to come.

For the next few lessons we are going to examine vital records. Vital records are the documentation of life events kept under governmental authority. In other words, official birth, marriage, and death records.

Just like with our census research we are going to work backwards through time beginning with someone’s death and moving back to the person’s marriage, if they had one, and then to their birth.

I encourage you to search in your own family documents to see if you own a family member’s death certificate. In our next lesson we will be dissecting the critical bits of data supplied by a death certificate and comparing death records to death indexes.