The release of the 1880 United States Census is a major announcement for several reasons. First, the availability of this resource on CD-ROM is news by itself. Next, this new resource contains a complete, nationwide index. The 1880 census has never been indexed before. In order to find a listed person, you had to already know where he or she lived at that time. If you have ancestors with unknown locations at that time, you probably were unable to find their census listings until now. Even if you knew they lived in a big city, finding their entries in the 1880 census was a tedious task until the release of this new CD-ROM tool.

The 1880 United States Census Records CD-ROM set contains transcribed records, not original images. That is, hundreds of volunteers spent hundreds of thousands of hours reading census records on microfilm and then typing pertinent information into the database. These transcribed records contain the following information about each person:

• Last name
• First name, often including middle name or initials
• Age
• Sex
• Race
• Marital status
• Occupation
• Relationship to the head of household
• State or country of birth
• Father’s state or country of birth
• Mother’s state or country of birth
• National Archives microfilm number and page
• Family History Library microfilm number

Keep in mind that the above items are only a subset of the original records. The following information appears in the original 1880 U.S. Census records but is not on the CD-ROM version:

• The street name and house number in cities
• Whether or not an individual was married within the year
• The number of months an individual was unemployed during the census year
• Whether or not an individual was sick or temporarily disabled so as not able to function normally, and if so, the nature of the illness
• Whether an individual was blind, deaf, dumb, idiotic, insane, maimed, crippled, bedridden, or otherwise permanently disabled
• Whether or not an individual attended school within the year (although the CD-ROM version does often list an occupation of "student" or "attends school").
• Whether or not an individual can read and write

As always, you will want to use the transcribed records on CD-ROM as a guide to the original records. Once you find a record on CD-ROM, you will want to view the original record on microfilm to obtain the rest of the details. Each record on CD lists the microfilm number and page number of the original record. You can view these microfilms in many libraries or rent them for about $3 each through a local Family History Center near you.

Installation of this CD-ROM set was simple. One of the CD-ROM disks contains the Windows software that you first install. The software is called Family History Resource File Viewer version 4.0 and apparently is based upon Folio Views, a product of the Folio Corporation. The software requires a Pentium processor (or equivalent), Windows 95, 98 or NT 4.0; eight megabytes of RAM minimum (16 megabytes recommended); a CD-ROM drive (4-speed or faster recommended), eight megabytes of hard disk space and a VGA monitor with 256-color-capable video card. While Windows 2000 was not listed as a supported operating system, I installed the software on my Windows 2000 Pro system, and everything appeared to function perfectly. The entire software installation took a minute or so to complete.

I have been told that Macintosh owners have successfully installed and used this software by using a thirty-two-bit Windows emulator on their Macs. While you probably can do the same, keep in mind that such operation is not guaranteed or supported by the software producers.

There is no manual included within the CD-ROM package, and I didn’t feel that I needed one. Operation was intuitive most of the time. When I had a question, I pressed F1 or clicked on "Help" and was soon able to find the answer in the built-in help files.

I first started by looking for one ancestor and found him quickly. Very conveniently, he was listed on Disk No. 1 of this fifty-six-disk set. Admittedly, I had found him before in the census records that I had viewed on microfilm, so I simply verified the data I already had. Everything on CD-ROM matched my earlier notes.

I then moved on to other families. I searched and searched for this person and that. Next, I started looking for information that I know is of interest to a few of my friends. I then looked for still others. The next thing I knew, I had spent six hours using this database. These CD-ROM disks are addictive.

When searching for names, be sure to check for variant spellings. For instance, my grandfather, Mike Deabay, and his father, Andrew Deabay, were both listed with a last name of Debeay. I have seen the microfilms of the original census records and know that the enumerator (census taker) wrote it with a space in the name—"De Beay"—although that space wasn’t shown on the CD-ROM transcriptions. I also know that my grandfather could not read or write and wasn’t sure how to spell his own name. I doubt if his father could read or write either. In 1880, many people could not do either. My other French-Canadian great-grandparents were listed with a last name of "Tareo" whereas it is spelled Theriault in church documents I have found. At least both names are pronounced the same. I would assume that the census takers had to guess at the spelling of many such names.

Such variations are common in census records, and the genealogist will always want to try various spellings. Luckily, this is easy to do in the 1880 U.S. Census CD-ROM disks as you can search by wild cards. That is, you can search for "d*b*y" will find all occurrences of Deabay, Debeay and De Beay as well as Debey, Danbury, Darby, Deboy, Derby, and many more.

You can even use wildcard on the first letter of a last name. For instance, census takers have been known to use the letter K instead of C or V instead of D. In addition, transcription errors creep in when the census taker’s handwriting is difficult to read or the ink has faded. The Letter R may be mistaken for a K or something similar; for example, the Rencher family may be listed as Kencher. You can easily find many spelling variations with wild card searches.

You can also use the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT. For instance, you can specify a search for all the men with first names of John or James but without the middle name of William.

In other instances, you may not even need to specify a name. If you do not know great-grandmother’s maiden name but do know her first name was Ida and that she was born in Massachusetts in 1868, you can specify a search of all the females named Ida born in that state and in that year. You can search by any combination of the following criteria:

• Gender
• Year of birth and you may specify plus or minus 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 years
• Race
• State or country of birthplace
• Residence in 1880 by any of the following:
• Region of the country (such as New England or Mid-Atlantic states)
• State
• County
• City or Town

Historians may find this CD-ROM collection to be a helpful tool as well. Anyone doing a study of a certain race in a certain location can use these CDs to speed their research. For example, one could identify all Black families in Michigan by searching for all families in that state with the Race field entered as "Black." Other race entries listed are Asian, Mexican, Mulatto, Native American, and White.

The Nationwide Index is especially useful when you have no idea where an ancestor lived in 1880. It won’t help much on common names like Smith or Johnson; however, if you are fortunate enough to have ancestors with less-common surnames, you may find this resource to be the most valuable of all. You may be able to locate their 1880 residence quickly and easily, something that would have been impossible before.

Another great feature of the 1880 U.S. Census database is the ability to quickly find neighbors. All you do is first locate the household of the individual you are looking for, and then click on the Neighbors tab. Voila! A list of neighbors appears. Scrolling up will show all households that were listed before the person's home. Scrolling down will show all households listed after your person's home.

I found this to be very useful for finding relatives. One of my great-grandfathers had a family with the same surname living nearby, a family I am not familiar with. I now will do some research on this other family to see how they fit into the family tree.

Neighboring households were not always listed consistently in the census index. Each census taker recorded households in a way that was most convenient at the time. A census taker may have worked on one side of the street for several blocks before crossing the street and working his way down the other side. Another census taker may have crisscrossed his way back and forth, working his way in the same direction across town. The information on the CDs does not include street addresses, so you cannot know what path a census taker followed in any given case from the CDs alone. You will need to view the referenced microfilm to decipher the pattern the census taker used to enumerate an area if you want to determine the position of these "neighbors."

Individual records are easily printed. I also found that I could cut-and-paste records from the CD-ROM into other Windows programs, such as the word processor I used to write this newsletter. Even better, you may export data (up to 100 records at a time) in ether GEDCOM format or as text files in RTF format. Any modern genealogy program can read the GEDCOM files so that data can be directly imported into a genealogy database. I suggest you only import into an empty database, never directly import into your primary genealogy database. Almost any modern word processor can read the RTF files as text that looks almost identical to the data displayed on the screen. For example, I found it easy to create a file of all the EASTMAN entries in Penobscot County, Maine.

As you move around in this database, looking for different family names in different parts of the country, you can expect to swap a lot of CD-ROM disks in and out of your computer. One CD-ROM disk can hold 550 to 650 megabytes of data, depending upon formatting. Therefore, the fifty-six CD-ROM disks in this set probably hold about thirty-three gigabytes of data. That’s 33,000 megabytes, or 33,000,000,000,000 bytes. Those of you who have a DVD drive might hope for a version on DVD, but keep in mind that DVD disks have just started to appear in the past two or three years. Such disks commonly hold four gigabytes of data each, and some of the newer designs will hold as much as sixteen gigabytes each. I suspect the Family History Department will offer this CD-ROM set on DVD disks within a few years, as soon as DVD drives become more common in American households. However, don’t look for a DVD version this year.

The 1880 U.S. Census and Nationwide Index is a great resource for many genealogists and one that should become very popular soon. I suspect the Family History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will sell many thousands of copies of this huge collection of CD-ROM disks. If you have ancestors living in the U.S. in 1880, you want this collection!

OK, here is the best part: This set of 56 CD-ROM disks, including software, sells for $49. That low price even includes the postage for shipment to a U.S. address. A high-quality genealogy resource that sells for less than a dollar per CD-ROM disk is bound to be very popular.

To order your own copy of the 1880 U.S. Census on CD-ROM, go to www.familysearch.org, click on "Order/Download Products" and then click on "Software Products." Continue to follow the menus until you find the 1880 census listed for $49. You will note that the order form is on a secure Web server, so you can safely enter your credit card number and other personal information.