Friday, May 22, 2015

Mocavo Has FREE U.S. Census Images Available Forever

Today's blog post by Mocavo on the Mocavo Genealogy Blog is welcome news - see U.S. Federal Census Images & Viewer Now Free for Everyone Forever

The link to the search fields is http://www.mocavo.com/1790-1940-United-States-Census/126199:



Below the search fields above are links to search fields for each U.S. Federal census.

I put Isaac Seaver in the search field, born in Massachusetts, and received 11 results:



Clicking on the name for the first one on the list, for the 1900 census, I saw the record summary, with more information about the 1900 census:



The user has to click a link below the indexed information to see other household members.  Mocavo does not provide a high quality source citation for this census record.  It does note, for the record above:

"Original data: Twelfth Census of the United States, Bureau of the Census. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 29. Micropublication T623."

However, there is no information about the Roll number, Enumeration District, or page number on the record summary.  The Enumeration district and the page number can be found on the record image, however.

When I clicked on "View Census Images," I saw the record image:



Although I searched for Isaac Seaver, the census page has his wife Elvira Seaver highlighted for some reason.   There is a person index at the bottom of the image, which can be suppressed.  The image can be zoomed in and out using the blue plus and minus icons in the left-hand margin. The magnifying glass in the right-hand margin is to search for other records for the person on Mocavo.  The user can move to the previous or next page of the census using the left and right arrow at the top right of the image.

When I put "1823" in the birth year field, the search did not find the 1900 census which clearly shows Isaac's birth date as "Oct 1823."  When I put "1824" in the birth year field, I received matches for the 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880 census records for the correct Isaac Seaver.  It would help if the Search field allowed a range of birth years (e.g., plus/minus 1, 2, 5 or 10 years) like other search engines provide.

The above are minor problems that will probably be corrected over time.  

The key point here is that this is the only genealogy website where a researcher can search the U.S. Census records for FREE, and see the record image for FREE.

The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2015/05/mocavo-has-free-us-census-images.html

Copyright (c) 2015, Randall J. Seaver


Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.


1 comment:

T said...

This is really great. For those of us living on S.S. there are only so many sites we can subscribe to.