COLONIAL AMERICA CENSUS WORK - LIMITS OF THE 1790 U.S. CENSUS : 13 ORIGINAL COLONIES and THEN SOME

The first census taken in what was the United States was taken in the year 1790 and its a statistical census. It features the names of heads of households, mostly men. There were less than four million people counted. Thomas Jefferson was then the Secretary of State, not yet President, and under his direction the census was taken not by census takers, but by the marshals of the various districts. The census was of the ORIGINAL 13 COLONIES that became STATES but also the districts of Kentucky, Southwest Territory (mostly what is now Tennessee), as well as Maine and Vermont. 

The 13 COLONIES WERE :  New Jersey (NJ), Maryland (MD), Virginia (VA) which included an expanse of what is now South West Pennsylvania*,  Rhode Island (RI), Connecticut (CT), New York (NY), Pennsylvania (PA), North Carolina (NC) and South Carolina (SC) - the state was split in two in 1712, Georgia (GA),  New Hampshire (NH), Massachusetts (MA). We tend to think of the 13 original colonies as all in the North East, as New England, but as you see, three of the states were actually in the South.

* Were your ancestors Colonial's living south of Pittsburgh? Yohoghania County Virginia is the name of the County that was disputed between the state of Virginia and the state of Pennsylvania, also called the District of West Augusta. As land grants and legalities were in dispute, you may want to look at records from both states.

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USEFULNESS OF EARLY STATISTICAL UNITED STATES FEDERAL CENSUS RECORDS

With the 1950 census in hand, we may wonder how the early census records can be helpful to our research.   

Just to refresh, in 1776 Independence was Declared. Then there was the Revolutionary War.  Before a first President, George Washington, who was a military war General, was installed it was April 30th, 1789. He was an eight year, two term president.  The first Federal United States Census was 1790.

The earliest census are, but for the name of the head of household, usually a male and a husband, and the rest rather statistical. If you haven't seen these the questions are about how many males and females are in the household and what their age categories are. So we can't expect the names of every member of a household until 1850.

First if you do have ancestors on the 1850 you can reasonably related to at least some the family members ten years back based on the statistics, sometimes more.  You can also go forwards to see if people are named, depending on if they are alive and so on.

However, perhaps the most important aspect of finding the state and county and town or place of residence of a family member is because of how that relates to court records. Before there were civil record requirements (Vital Records) people pretty much kept a record of when people in the family were born or died in a Bible or such.  So, the older census are still helpful for locating them.  Our early colonial ancestors moved a lot, usually as the family expanded for the purchase of land to farm or ranch. If we know where they were, we can then attempt to find records of land purchases and sales, wills, and so on.

As a note, we would also like to find them on maps.

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