Remember the 2010 Census? Remember the minor hullabaloo over it's intrusive questions? Remember Michele Bachmann's umbrage at the the nit picky and personal info that the Census gatherers were attempting to collect, and her public refusal to answer their "none of your beeswax questions?" Like everything else about this boorish, ignorant horse's ass of a Representative, her objections were farsical. As a genealogist, I'm here to tell you...my great-great grandchildren will gleen nothing from my responses to the 2010 census. Especially so, since I never got the long form in the mail, nor had any follow up visit from a walking, talking census taker. But even if I had...they would be hard pressed, should they find my name listed in the published census come 2080, to decipher one damned thing about who I was, where I came from, what I did, or how I lived. Unless you count being a renter or home owner as some deep insight into your ancestry.
One has to wonder what sort of popular revolt erupted in 1850 in the face of that census, or in 1880 for that matter. It must have been cataclysmic.
Actually, it wasn't. And those censuses were much more "intrusive."
If, like me, you never saw a census taker one year ago, and never got a form in the mail...here's what you missed: Ten questions.
1.) How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment or mobile home on April 1, 2010?
2.) Were there any additional people staying here April 1, 2010 that you did not include in Question 1?
3.) Is this house, apartment or mobile home owned by you or someone in the house with a mortgage? Owned free and clear? Rented? Occupied without payment of rent?
4.) What is your telephone number (number to call if an answer is unclear)? (Okay...that's intrusive)
5.) Names of the individuals living in the home.
6.) Sex of the individual inhabitants of the home.
7.) Ages and dates of birth of the individual inhabitants of the home.
8.) Are any the individuals living in the home of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin?
9.) The race of the individual inhabitants of the home.
10.) Do any of the individuals live or stay somewhere else?
That's pretty rough. I mean....really. Why do they need to know if there were any people living in my home that were of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin? What part of privacy do they not understand? True...I have answered more personal questions posed by strangers, sometimes on a first date, but only in the hopes that I might get laid after dinner. But this?
Now...imagine yourself in the year 2090. Your parents moved around...they split up...you never knew your dad, or maybe the other way around. Nobody ever talked about the missing side of your family, but you were always curious. So you take up genealogy, and set about doing some digging.
There he/she is!!! Right there in the 2010 census! Your heart skips a beat or two once you scroll down to their name, and you're hungry to see what you can learn.
And what do you learn? A phone number that is probably obsolete technology by then, and the fact that your ancestor rented their house. Oh...and somebody by the name of Carol Miller lived there, too. Relationship unknown. As you scan the census record and look at your ancestor's responses to the questions asked, you no doubt ask yourself: Wow...how shocking that they would pry into such intimate details bout peoples' lives on such a form.
Or not.
Definitely not, if you go back even further to the 1850 census. The first census was taken in 1790, and identified only the head of the household by name. Everyone else in the household, whether immediate family, extended family or street urchin that had been taken in, was enumerated only by sex and whether they were older or younger than 16 years of age. It also enumerated the number of slaves in the household, if any. That was the Bachmann census, taken in the time that she should have been born in.
By 1820 intrusiveness had already encroached. The only person named in the census was still the head of household, but now they also wanted to know the breakdown of household members by sex and age brackets: under 10, from 10 to 16, 16 to 18, 18 to 26, 26 to 45, and over 45. Oh...and any slaves as well. They also inquired about your livelihood...were you engaged in either agriculture, commerce or manufacturing? There was no category for currency trader or subprime loan provider, but they did ask if anyone in the household was not yet naturalized as a US citizen. All in all, it was still sketchy information, but one could still, generations later, glean some information from the census response.
In 1850, however, we witness an almost breathtaking expansion of governmental intrusiveness. One must wonder how the populace responded. Were census takers assaulted, as more than 100 were in 2010? Were angry letters written to small town newspapers decrying the unprecedented and unwarranted intrusion upon personal privacy that the census that year represented? If such occurrences took place, I am not aware of it.
Yet, here are the questions the federal government asked each citizen to answer:
Name, age, sex and color of every person in the household.
Occupation of each person over age 15.
Value of real estate owned.
Place of birth of each person.
Was the person married within the year.
Did the person attend school within the year.
Can the person read and write. (only if over age 20).
Is the person deaf, dumb, blind, insane, idiotic, a pauper or convict
Much as I would like to say so, I have scoured the records of my Appalachian ancestors thoroughly, and cannot point to one who was insane, idiotic, a pauper, a convict and could not read and write. I mean in combination. Some of them fit individual categories....and I won't go into which ones.
But see my point? Compare those questions to the 2010 census. And if you were the seeker in 1090 trying to glean some insight into your roots, which census would you find more interesting? More informative? More...worthwhile?
By 1880, the census was even more thorough. They asked:
If you live in a city, house number and street name.
Name, age, sex and color of every person in the household.
If a person was born within the year, the month of birth was given.
Relationship of each person to the Head of Household.
Is the person single, married, widowed or divorced.
Was the person married within the year.
Occupation of each male.
Occupation of each female.
How many months was the person unemployed during the census year.
Whether or not a person was sick or temporarily disabled, and if so, the nature of the illness.
Whether a person was blind, deaf, dumb, idiotic, insane, maimed, crippled, bedridden or permanently disabled.
Did the person attend school within the year.
Can the person read and write.
Place of birth of each person.
Place of birth of each person's mother.
Place of birth of each person's father.
These are questions the government has no right to ask, you might say. These are questions, or at least many of them are, that a cursery examination of our facebook page should only reveal. That's a slight exageration...but only that.
For the life of me, I can't figure out what the brouhaha was all about over the last census.
And for the life of me, I can't figure out how future genealogists will piece together the puzzle of there pasts with the census as it is currently constructed.
But perhaps the internet really is a game changer. You've heard the old expression "This will go into your permanent record." Maybe the internet, and ramblings such as this, are the new "permanent record", and future genealogists will learn more about us 80 years from now by searching the internet than we do now by searching census records.
At least I know for sure that there are no nude pics of my grandmother on the web. The future is wide open.