Today Footnote.com announced it will digitize and create a searchable database for all publicly available U.S. Federal Censuses, ranging from the first U.S. Census taken in 1790 to the most current public census from 1930. Through its partnership with the National Archives, Footnote.com will add more than 9.5 million images featuring over half a billion names to its extensive online record collection.
With over 60 million historical records already online, Footnote.com will use the U.S. Census records to tie content together, creating a pathway to discover additional records that previously have been difficult to find.
“We see the census as a highway leading back to the 18th century,” explains Russ Wilding, CEO of Footnote.com. “This Census Highway provides off-ramps leading to additional records on the site such as naturalization records, historical newspapers, military records and more. Going forward, Footnote.com will continue to ad valuable and unique collections that will enhance the census collection.”
As more census decades are added to the site, visitors to Footnote.com can view the status for each decade and sign up for an email notification when more records are added to the site for a particular year.
View the Census Progress Page on Footnote.com.
In addition to making these records more accessible, Footnote.com is advancing the way people use the census by creating an interactive experience. Footnote members can enrich the census records by adding their own contributions. Users can:
- Add comments and insights about a person
- Upload and attach scanned photos or documents related to that person
- Generate a Footnote Page for any individual that features stories, a photo gallery, timeline and map
- Identify relatives found in the census by clicking the I’m Related button
“We will continue to move aggressively to add records to the site, specifically those that are requested by our members and others that are not otherwise available on the internet,” said Wilding.
The Interactive Census Project is now underway. Enjoy and interact with the project here.
I would love to see the Agriculture Schedules of the U.S. Census included in this project as it would give a better look at how some of our ancestors lived.
Oh lovely, now the government can keep tabs on everyone with even more efficiency!!