Censuses are a tool of genealogical value in family investigation

You can't imagine the quantity of information you can find in a census. Censuses became an important clue in the construction of family groups, family that existed since 18th century. Many countries in the world kept records of their censuses that will help you find your ancestors.

A Census is a recolection of data of a person and of family groups that include the state, county, city , street, number of residence, names of person or family group, age, sex, relationship with head of family, civil status, ocupation, literacy status, scholar education, religion, nationality, year of inmigration, country where the person was born, when emigrated. It can give the information of people that were living in the same place of the family group, but that haven't got a family conexion.

In 1787 United States determined that censuses have to be conducted every ten years, and in 1790 was registered the first federal census and from that year on you can find censuses every ten years, but they may include different formats

At the beginning, the censuses had political meaning and for the recolection of taxes, so that they only enumerated the heads of household because they were the only people that voted and paid taxes. There was a moment that goverments realized that censuses could be of great help, and they started to include questions about inmigration, economical question and that gave way to other type of information that could be useful for other type of affairs.

The information a census gives is priceless. You can reconstruct whole families, an entire neighborhood, and emigration records of census gives information about families that left the native country in search of better life and to form a family, who at the end are your relatives.

In the time of the war of the independence of Venezuela there was a General named José Tomás Boves who used brutality, he was a bad man, and people felt panic when they hear about him. Some of my family emigrated to Puerto Rico by the time of the war of independence, they were running away from the slaughter this general was going to cause in the city of Carupano situated in the Orient of Venezuela. I have found this family in the census of inmigration in Puerto Rico. This family settled there and have many generations established in that country. I have found some people of my family history in the census of emigration.

This lady is a daughter of a brother of my great grandfather, she was born in 1906 and married a man named Diomedes Martínez Mayz. I learnt that her husband was a business man and they emigrated to Brazil. I found this information in a census. I hope you will have the joy to find your family wherever they are and have the joy to obtain as much information about your family as possible.