Heartland Genealogy

Do you just rely on Ancestry's record information for census records prior to 1850? Or do you locate an extraction form for the census year to verify the interpretation of the check marks? I have to admit that I often just use the information provided by Ancestry. I'm not sure why I decided to locate an extraction form and record the census information for myself today. However, I'm glad I did since I think the Ancestry record had one piece of information incorrect. I was researching Isaac Crawford of Jefferson County, Indiana. I suspected he was living in Jefferson County in 1820 but hadn't obtained a census record to support that suspicion. So, I searched Ancestry and was able to locate a record for Isaac Crawford in Jefferson County, Indiana.

Michele Simmons Lewis' post, My Latest Excel Spreadsheet , explained what should be a fairly easy spreadsheet to visualize which census data is needed for individuals in the tree. In order to quickly create this spreadsheet, I had to review some skills I've yet to master in RootsMagic, one of those being the creation of a named group . Once I had a named group created for my ancestors, I was able to create a custom report to pull the following fields: Surname, Given Name, Birth Date, Death Date. By saving the report as a text file, I could then open it in Excel. In the comments section of Michele's blog post, JJT (John J Tierney)stated that he had created a similar spreadsheet that would automatically calculate the age of the person for each census year. His post, Simple Census Age Table , discusses this spreadsheet, which he freely shares. So, I downloaded the spreadsheet. (Thanks JJT!) After manipulating my data to pull the year out of the birth and death dates, I...