Writing in the Ancestry.com blog, Heather Erickson describes the newest offerings on the giant online service. If your ancestors owned a business between 1850 and 1880, you’ll now be able to learn the details of their company, or even their farm, in the Non-Population Census Schedules, 1850-1880 that are now online. This unique collection of agriculture, industry/manufacturers, and social statistics contains the names and details of more than 4 million people and businesses from the late 1800s.
Included in the industry/manufacturing schedules are the company name, a description of the type of business, amount of capital invested, the quantity and value of resources used, the quantity of yearly production, and the number of individuals hired.
Included in the industry/manufacturing schedules are the company name, a description of the type of business, amount of capital invested, the quantity and value of resources used, the quantity of yearly production, and the number of individuals hired.
Erickson then goes on to give several examples of companies in the 1800s, including Folgers Coffee, Bausch & Lomb, Tiffany & Co., and Harper's.
I tried the searches but found nothing about any of my ancestors In fact, the search didn't seem to work properly. The search allows the user to specify the town and state in which the business was located. However, the results seemed to ignore the locations. I specified a search for an ancestor who lived in the small town of Corinth, Maine and yet the system returned all sorts of results for men of the same last name in New York. I didn't see a single listing for anyone in Maine.
I specified a search for men named Washington Eastman (my great-great-grandfather) but the not one record for any man of that name was returned. Instead, Ancestry.com displayed lots of records for people with a first name of Charles, Catherine, Cyrus, Daniel, and all sorts of other first names but there was not a single Washington in the group. I have to wonder why I even entered that name as a search term.
I'd say that Ancestry.com's latest offering shows a lot of promise but it needs some refinement before it becomes useful. When I specify a search for a particular name in a certain town, I would expect to see matching results for that name and that town and nothing else. Sadly, I saw everything but what I had specified. The last names were correct, but the first names and the locations were wrong 100% of the time when I searched the Non-Population Census Schedules this evening. I tried searching for records in several different states, but Ancestry.com always displayed New York records and apparently ignored the first names that I had entered.
Non-Population Census Schedules reportedly are available for California, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington.
You can read Heather Erickson's entire article at http://tinyurl.com/2ff9zra
