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1880 Census CD Tips

The 1880 U. S. Census and National Index on CD-ROM
was released in 2001 by the FamilySearch organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The set consists of 56 CDs and contains information on more than 50 million persons. Each CD holds up to 650MB. The National Index on 20 CDs is about 13MB of data; there are 35 Regional CDs holding up to 22MB of data; the 56th CD is the Resource Viewer. And the set sells for only $49.00.

The 1880 census has never been indexed before.
The Soundex for the 1880 census contains only households with a child 10 years old or younger.

The 1880 U. S. Census Records CD set contains transcribed records, not original images.
Use the transcribed records on CD as a guide or index to the original records. Once you find a record on the CD you should view the original record on microfilm to obtain the rest of the information. Remember that all of the same cautions apply to using these CDs as apply when using hard-copy indexes and transcripts:
  • The census taker may have been given information different from what you have (you don't know who gave the information and whether they knew the truth)
  • Transcription errors can occur when census pages are difficult to read due to condition or the census taker's handwriting
  • Inconsistencies exist in spelling and "abbreviations" used by census takers


These transcribed records contain the following information about each person: The following information appears in the original but is not on the CD:
Last name Street and house number in cities
First name, often with middle name / initials Whether married within the year
Age The number of months unemployed
Sex Whether sick or temporarily disabled / nature of the illness
Race Whether blind, deaf, dumb, idiotic, insane, maimed, crippled, bedridden, or otherwise permanently disabled
Marital status Whether attended school within the year (sometimes indicated on the CD)
Occupation Whether can read and write
Relationship to the head of household  
Birthplace  
Father's birthplace  
Mother's birthplace  
NARA microfilm number / page  
FHL microfilm number  

Search Tips and Sample Searches

  1. Be ready to swap a lot of CDs in and out of the drive as you use this index and transcript. But do NOT remove a CD until the program tells you to insert another as the program has to "close" one CD before it will let you access another. If you remove a CD before the program is ready you will have to re-insert the CD before you can go to the next step.

  2. Start Family History Resource File Viewer by clicking on the icon or using Start / Programs / Family History / Family History Resource Viewer. Then double-click 1880 U.S. Census National Index. Once you are using the CDs the status bar at the bottom of the screen will display useful information such as how many hits your search got and which hit you are currently looking at, what kind of search was done, which CD is currently in the CD-ROM drive, and the version of the viewer software.

    To access the built-in help text use F1 or click on "Help." There is a lot of useful information in the HELP on how to make your searches more productive - learn the advanced features so you can let the computer do the hard work and you just view the results.

  3. Tools / bookmarks allows you to set bookmarks and name them so you can then return to the marked item easily. This will be useful if you want to compare several entries or quickly return to a previously viewed entry.

  4. Edit / Tag-UnTag a record allows you to select records to be remembered so you can save or print a group of records. Tagging a record is ONLY valid until the CD is removed and a new one inserted so be sure to save/print tagged records before you swap CDs.

  5. Records are easy to print or to copy and paste into other Windows programs, such as a word processor. You can also export data in GEDCOM format or as text files in RTF format. Be aware that there is a limit of 100 records that can be saved or printed so if you have done a search that found more than 100 records you cannot save or print all of them at one time.

  6. Use the Nationwide Index when you don't know where an ancestor lived in 1880. With common names like Smith or Johnson you will still have a lot of records to search through but you can narrow the search if you have estimated birth year and/or birth place. If you are fortunate enough to have ancestors with less-common surnames, you may be able to locate their 1880 residence quickly and easily.
    You can search using any combination of the following fields for ANY individual in a household (not just the head of household):
    • Name - given and surname
      Can use | for BOOLEAN OR such as john|jack
      No wildcards are accepted on the national index search but standardized names are used; for example - a search for howell finds howell, houll, van howels, etc.)
    • Gender - male, female, or allow both
    • Year of birth and you may specify plus or minus 0 to 5 years
    • Race - Asian, Black, Mexican, Mulatto, Native American, White
    • Birthplace
    • Census State or Region of the country (such as New England or Mid-Atlantic states)
    If you do not know a female ancestor's maiden name but her given name was Mary, state of birth was Texas and she was born between 1843 and 1850, you can search for all females meeting these criteria. You will have to search EACH of the 20 CDs in the National Index as each CD contains different alphabetized surnames but its still easier than searching 50 state indexes at the library (even if they did all exist).

    Once the search is complete a window pops up showing how many matches were found and allowing you to modify the search and redo it or display the records found.
    Here are some sample searches showing the number of matches or hits:
    howell surname gets 26,673 matches
    john howell gets 1200 matches
    john|jack howell gets 1225 matches
    john howell born 1850 - 5 year range gets 201 matches
    john|jack howell born 1850 - 5 year range in TX census gets 8 matches
    NAME       RELATIONSHIP YEAR  GNDR RACE BIRTH CENSUS
HOWELL, Jack    Self    1845    M   B   KY     TX
HOWELL, John    Self    1847    M   W   AL     TX
HOWELL, John W. Self    1848    M   W   SC     TX
HOWELL, John L. Self    1849    M   W   AL     TX
HOWELL, John M. Self    1850    M   W   TN     TX
HOWELL, John    Self    1850    M   W   TN     TX
HOWELL, John P. Self    1854    M   W   TN     TX
HOWEL, John     Son     1855    M   W   MS     TX

    Once you locate a record you wish to view just click on the name and the program will tell you which CD to insert then will display the record with additional details.
    HOWELL, John M.	Self	1850	M	W	Bir:	TN
Cen:	TX	Collin	Precinct5

Census Place:	Precinct 5, Collin, Texas
  Source: FHL Film 1255296  [NARA] Film T9-1296 Page 216B     
	Relation	Sex	Marr	Race	Age	Birthplace
John M. HOWELL	Self	M	M	W	30	TN
	Occ:	Farmer	Fa: TN	Mo: TN
Julia HOWELL	Wife	F	M	W	23	TX
	Occ:	Keeps House	Fa: TN	Mo: TN
Nannie HOWELL	Dau	F	S	W	4M	TX
			Fa: TN	Mo: TX
    You must click on View / Details once you are looking at the individual records to display the occupation and birthplace of parents as shown above.

  7. Locating neighbors, possible relatives, is easy. All you do is first locate the household of the person you are looking for (as shown above), and then click on the Neighbors tab. 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. You can scroll as far as you want - even going through the entire county or state if you wish.

    (The following is from Dick Eastman's review of the CDs in Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter, Vol. 6 No. 22 - May 28, 2001 which is archived at http://www.ancestry.com/library/view/columns/eastman/eastman.asp

    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."

  8. Advanced Searches can be done on the regional CDs but are not available using the National Index CDs. Each household is considered a record when doing advanced searches so it looks for all your search criteria in each household.
    Click on Search / Neighbors-Advanced Query to get the advanced search window.

    BE AWARE: as soon as you start entering search text the program will start searching the index so sometimes you just have to sit back and wait for it to catch up - especially if you are using " to get exact phrases.

    Useful for ancestors with common names, for example in Texas there are 49 entries for Samuel Johnson but only 5 of them also have a Nancy in the household so this narrows my search for Samuel Johnson who was married to Nancy Sills.

    The screen will display the number of hits for each search term as it is found and the number of "grouped" items:
    "samuel johnson" and nancy

samuel  --- 6493  |
johnson --- 8983 -|- 49 |
nancy   --- 12143 ------|- & - 5
    Click OK to view the records.

    F4 or View Next finds the next entry
    Shift/F4 or View Previous finds Previous entry
    or scroll through the screen as it will now only display entries matching the search criteria

    WILDCARDS AND GROUPING - FROM ONLINE HELP

    WILDCARDS
    *= MATCH ANY NUMBER of characters (john* = john, johns, johnson, johnston, etc.)
    ?= MATCH ANY ONE character (?ill = bill, will, jill, etc.)
    %= MATCH STEM WORDS - % must be at the end - finds plurals, ed/ing etc. endings (work% = work, works, working)

    BOOLEAN CONDITIONS
    & = AND - find records containing ALL search terms (mary & alice)
    | = OR - find records containing ANY of these search terms (john|jack = find records containing john or jack)
    ^ = NOT - find records NOT containing this search term (mary ^ ann = find all Mary's who do not have Ann as a second name)

    GROUPING
    " give exact phrase search - "livery stable"
    ( ) When two or more operators are used in a search, the results of one operator will be evaluated before another operator. The operator precedence is: Not, Or, XOr, And. You can use parentheses ( ) to specify precedence.


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