Genealogy Basics: Census Search on-line

My genealogy search involved hunting for family tree information in four countries: Canada, The United States, Norway and Great Britain. I started with what I knew, then went to the internet to search for additional records.

Of the four: Norway was the easiest country in which to find on-line records despite the language difficult (once again - the records are in Norwegian which I neither speak, read, nor write - suprisingly this wasn't as big a problem as you might think) so let me start there. Digitalarkivet has a database containing transcriptions of the national census results for 1801, 1865, 1875 and 1900 as well as many other records, located in one easy to use site. You can navigate through many of the initial pages in English (Use Google translate to help with the rest) and it is possible to do a broad search of the entire country using using keywords such as "First Name", "Last Name" or "Farm" or search by location within the country. This is a free site.

For Canada, I used The Canadian Genealogical Center website which is part of the information offered on-line by Collections Canada, as well as Automated Genealogy which provides searchable databases of the 1901, 1906 and 1911 Federal censuses. Both are free.

For census results from the United States and Great Britain I used Ancestry.com since it seems to be the only agency putting this information on the internet. As I've mentioned before - Ancestry is a subscription site. You need to register and pay a fee to use the information.

I have a love/hate relationship with Ancestry - I love what I can find using their site, but I hate to pay out money (I've been spoiled by free records from other countries) There is a free trial period and if you use it wisely, this might be enough for you. (Be warned: You must give a credit card number to register for the trial period and you must remember to cancel the trial at the end of the period. If you forget - they will start charging you!) Sadly, the trial wasn't long enough for me and the sources were to useful. I pulled out my wallet and signed up!



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