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OTISFIELD CENSUS TRANSCRIPTIONS

I am currently in the process of transcribing the census for Otisfield as time permits.  My special thanks to Jean Hankins for assistance on interpretation of handwriting and proofreading!  Please scroll down to the table below to see which years are on line. 

In the U.S., a census has been taken every 10 years from 1790 through 2020. All censuses taken after 1920 are still confidential and the information they contain is not open to the public. The census from 1790 through 1840 only named the head of the household and the numbers of people in categories - 3 males over 16, 2 males under 16, etc. The census from 1850 through 1920 lists each member of the household and usually gives the relationship to the head of the house. It also gives age (later years give birth month and year) and place of birth (usually just the state or foreign country). The 1890 census was almost totally destroyed by fire so there is a 20 year gap between 1880 and 1900.

Census abstracts are forms that you can fill out when you are doing  research with census records. They allow you to copy information from the census records in an organized way, helping ensure that you don't miss any important information. 

 Ocupsyshun - Census Taker

"I am a sensus taker for the city of Bufflow.  Our sity has groan verry fast in resent years & now in 1865, it has become a hard & time konsuming job to kount all the peephill. There are not many that kan do this werk, as it is nesessarie to have an ejucashun, wich a lot of pursons still do not have. Anuther atribeart needed for this job is god spelling, for meny of the pephill to be kounted can hardle speek inglish, let alon spel there names!" Hopefully this explains why you see your "names" spelt differently in some places.

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