It gets a bit tricky before 1850

I've been sitting here struggling for the past several weeks, trying to put together a family which seems to have originated well before 1800. As I have said before, putting families together after 1850 is almost a breeze (once you find them in the census) because you have names and ages, and sometimes, even relationships.

As I was feverishly trying to figure out how many kids of each sex went into which slots, I thought to myself, if I'm having a hard time here, what about those poor people who are just starting out? So, I thought I'd give you some tips on what I did to make the task a little easier.

The first thing you should do is go the Genealogy.com's site and print out blank census forms for all the census years. They have them from 1790 through 1920, with a note that says 1930 is coming soon. Some years have two pages, some have three. You will use these sheets to sort the age groups asked for in each census year ... and they do vary from year to year.

Ancestry.com also has blank forms, including 1930, but they are in pdf format and have to be downloaded to your computer before you can even look at them. Then, you have to open them in Adobe Acrobat before you can print them out. Genealogy.com's forms are much easier to access. Here's the Web address: www.familytreemaker.com/00000061.html.

When you view the forms, you will see that there are boxes for the age groups that people living in the household fall into. The census taker wrote the number of people of different age groups in those little boxes. I don't want to give a detailed description of all the years, so I'm going to use a "for instance." Since I've been working mostly with 1830 and 1840, let's use 1840. Any children in this census should show up in 1850 with a name and age. This makes it a little easier for you if this is your first time doing this.

The next step is not absolutely necessary but I like to make a chart so I can see when the people in each age group were born. A sheet of legal size paper works best for this. You'll see why in a minute. I do this because all the genealogy programs refer to people by their birth year and not their age. I need a reference point (approximate birth year) if I'm trying to match up families I've found in later censuses. I keep these sheets in a folder along with my blank census forms (right beside my computer). Actually, I ended up typing out the chart (in big print) on a regular size piece of paper so it fits in the folder without folding.

Starting with the current year (1840) put that number at the top. Underneath it, put 1839; under that, 1838; then, 1837, and continue down the page to the birth year range for the oldest person in the household. I think I went back to 1750.

Now look at your census sheet and you'll see that the first age group, is for males under 5. That actually means age 0-4, so, on your chart, bracket the years 1836-1840 with your pencil and put out to the side, "0-4."

The next age group is males "of 5 and under 10." This actually means age 5-9, so bracket the years 1831-1835 and put "5-9" out to the side.

The next group is "of 10 and under 15" which means age 10-14, so make another bracket around the years 1826-1830. Continue until you have all the age groups and their corresponding birth years bracketed.

Now find your ancestor in the census for 1840 and write down the number of people in each age group. If there are no people, put a zero. Your entry may look like this: 1100100000000 (for males). There are 13 slots for free white males in the 1840 census, and 13 more for free white females. There are also six slots for male slaves and six slots for female slaves. But, since they aren't in family groups, it will be hard to tell who is related. There are other slots also, but for simplicity's sake, we will just cover the free white males and females.

Now, do the same for your females. Let's say females look like this: 0100100000000. You can go ahead and write them on your census sheet if you want to, but I save mine to refer to every time I need to find an early census.

Now, looking at your census sheet and comparing it to your chart, you have the following family: One male under 5 (b. 1836-1840), one male 5-9 (b. 1831-1835), one male 20-29 (b. 1801-1810 ... obviously, this must be daddy); one female 5-9 (b. 1831-1835), one female 20-29 (b. 1801-1810 ... must be the mommy). So we have mom and dad and three children living in this home in 1840. Mom and dad are young (between 20 and 29) and so is their budding family ... all under 10 years of age.

Now, find your ancestors in the 1850 census. Let's say you have William Jones, age 37, and his wife, Matilda, age 35. There are seven children: Parker Jones, age 16, Martha Jones, age 16, David Jones, age 14, Susannah Jones, age 9, Rachel Jones, age 7, Robert Jones, age 5, and Matilda Jones, age 2. (I just made up the names, so don't go trying to match them with an actual family.)

You can quickly see this is the same family, and the two children ages 5-9 in 1840 were twins. Since 1840, William and Matilda were blessed with four more children. If you also have found burial places for these people, you can see if their birth and death years match up with those you found in the census. Now, was that fun, or what?

This system sure works for me, although my situation is a bit more complicated. I'm trying to find a bunch of daughters born between 1811 and 1838 who all left home by 1850. To make matters worse, marriage records between 1825 and 1838 are missing for the whole county. Now that ain't fun! Challenging, yes. Fun, not! I will let you know if I make any progress.

Send stories about your Georgia ancestors to The Citizen, Drawer 1719, Fayetteville, GA 30214; E-mail jkilgore@thecitizennews.com or jodiek444@aol.com.

Until next week, happy hunting!