1900 US Census Records on Family Search

Question

I've recently encountered a problem with FS records on the 1900 U.S. Census.  The affected records have their locations indexed incorrectly. For these, if one searches using the census location, the 1900 record will not be retrieved.

I reported the problem to Family Search and this morning received their reply acknowledging the issue. They say that their engineers are aware of this and are working on a solution, but that it is a large problem and they don't have a time frame for its solution. They go on to say they need examples of the problem, so it's good to report instances when we find them: https://www.familysearch.org/help/. The case no. is #07972081 (https://www.familysearch.org/help/mycases/5004V0000138CyXQAU), but I'm not sure whether or not this is publicly viewable.

Since I have access to Ancestry, I have the workaround of finding the 1900 Census record there, copying the FHL ID number, and searching on FS using that and the name as the search parameters.

Answer 1

Many thanks for posting this and where to report it. I have noticed the problem also. Good work-around for those who have the Ancestry account. Please update us if you receive a message when it is fixed.

Comments

Will do, Virginia.  Were you able to access the the case URL? If so, I suspect this would be a good place to follow FH's progress.

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I think only you can access the case number - when I clicked on it I was taken to case numbers that I had on file with FS.

Answer 2

For anyone who doesn't have access to Ancestry, your local library might offer access online. You used to have to go to the library and show your library card, but some of the larger libraries have opened access during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Comments

Another online Census resource is Archive.org.  I have had good results using this page: https://archive.org/details/us_census.

Answer 3

I have seen this issue quite a bit, both with the 1900 census and also with 1920. The pattern that I have seen is that a township and county are placed in the wrong state, such as Buffalo Township, Ogle County, Illinois moving to Georgia. I just saw it also happen with Hall County, Nebraska going to the wrong state.

If you can find the census on FamilySearch (e.g., via the FamilySearchFamilyTree or via the hints provided for other records), you can select edit for the location field then highlight the portion of the image that was indexed incorrectly.

Answer 4

It now appears that many, if not all, 1900 US Census records have been removed from Family Search.  Presumably, this is a follow-up to the indexing mishap reported earlier.  I hope they're in the process of re-indexing them and will put them back eventually.

Comments

Bill, I would say not all but some. I just ran into a family with the head of household, wife, 2 daughters, and laborer where the daughters and laborer were replaced with the info for the head of household. I reported it. Gah!

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Kay, yes. It appears that they are resolving the problem.  I now see instances where they have 2 records for the same census citation, 1 deleted, 1 not.  But, on the new 1900 citations there is still no geographic information.