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Over the last six months, this column has discussed the "Anatomy" of the federal census for the years from 1870-1930, not including the mostly-destroyed 1890 census. In this series of articles, each column of the census questionnaire was examined, and clues that will aid your research were discussed. If you have missed any of these articles, you can read them again using the links below: Anatomy of the 1930 federal census Anatomy of the 1920 federal census Anatomy of the 1910 federal census Anatomy of the 1900 federal census Anatomy of the 1880 federal census Anatomy of the 1870 federal census In a discussion concerning the federal census as evidence for genealogical research, however, one must also consider the question: are census records reliable sources?

This article is part of a continuing series looking at each federal census individually. Please read the others in the archives of this column. The 1870 U. S. Census was the Ninth Decennial Census. This census is probably the single most important census for genealogists conducting research on African-American families

When the 1860 federal census was collected and enumerated, slavery was still legal within most of the states south of the Mason-Dixon line. The 1860 federal census enumerated only free people of color in its population schedule; slaves were enumerated namelessly on a separate schedule, identified only by slave owner, age, gender, and color.

Previous posts in this column demonstrated the use of family clusters and neighborhood clusters to identify families in the U. S. federal census. In this post, we will use these same techniques to identify the last owners of a family freed after the abolition of slavery.

In the 1920 federal census for Leon County, Texas, a seventy-four year old African-American man named Jeff Clark lives with his sixty-four year old wife Hattie. Jeff was a farmer who owned his own farm, and worked his own land. The census further records that he was born in Alabama, as were both of his parents. His granddaughter also lived with them.

This column previously addressed the importance of the 1870 U. S. census in African-American research. As noted in that article, this was the first federal census after the end of the Civil War, and therefore the first record group to record personal information about former slaves nationwide. It was not, however, the earliest record group to do so in many localities. Many similar record groups were created that provide information about former slaves between 1865 and 1870.

During the struggle for civil rights, many brave men and women sacrificed their lives to improve the lives of Americans of all races. Unfortunately, because of lingering institutional racism in the South, the murders of these civil rights workers were not all investigated to their fullest, and quite a few went unsolved. The Federal Bureau of Investigation recently announced its "Civil Rights-Era Cold Case Initiative," to try to identify the next-of-kin of some of the victims of these cases.