Tuesday, April 3, 2007

1925 Iowa State Census data on Ancestry

My love-in-law is lucky - part of her family was in Iowa in 1925. Note: my love-in-law is the partner of my brother-in-law...makes sense, no?

I spent an hour tonight going through the Iowa State Census records available on www.Ancestry.com. There are census records from 1836 to 1925. I concentrated tonight on the 1925 records because they are the most recent, and hold the most potential for finding additional information on the parents of the people in the census.

The information on the 1925 Iowa census includes:

* Name
* Relation to head of household
* gender
* race
* age
* marital status
* rent or own
* birthplace
* father's name
* father's birthplace
* father's age
* mother's maiden name
* mother's birthplace
* mother's age
* person's marriage location

There are some real goodies there! For instance, I found that Thomas E. Corporon (head, white, male, age 57, married, born MO) had parents Geo W. Corporon (born Canada, age 83) and Jane McClure (born MO, no age). His wife, Anna E. Corporon (wife, female, white, age 55, married, born IA, had parents James Kin g (born MO, no age) and Sarah Bentley (born OH, no age). The previous data from an online source said that her mother was Sarah Johnston, and I had been unable to find her before the marriage in the census.

You can search on the mother's or father's given name and/or surname, so you can find children of specific people in the census. This is especially handy if you are looking for the married name of daughters.

This is a wonderful resource - it's too bad more census records didn't take genealogists wishes into account!

If you have Iowa ancestors in the 1920's, try to access the 1925 Iowa State Census on www.ancestry.com for the data on those people.

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