Check the Neighbors in the Census

Now I know it's been said MANY times over but when researching the territorial, state or federal censuses, always check the neighbors for the missing married into the family son-in-law, daughter-in-law and father-in-law and mother-in-law families. I was working on one of my Wisconsin- Minnesota German immigrant lines this weekend and found three of the married-in families living within six houses of one another in a small town on the federal census pages. Usually when I first use the census, I don't know all of the families that marry into the particular line, but now that digitized images of the census pages are so readily available, it is easy to recheck the families living nearby once I know who the sons and daughters marry.

Remember to also check as many of the censuses as the family may appear on, since on the census taker may have taken the time to write a new clue about the exact village, state or more specific area that an immigrant ancestor came from. I also like the 1900 and 1910 federal census notations on how long the couple has been married, number of childern and number of children living. I have found a few missing babies this way! Check the church cemetery or nearest local cemetery and the online cemetrey indexes that are also increasingly available online.