Rednecks, Census Records and Fried Fiche

Adventures in Genealogy: The Library
Or
Rednecks, Census Records and Fried Fiche

Everyone kept telling me that to make any real progress in my genealogical research that I needed to go to the Library and check into the Census Records. Well, yall all know that I am an industrious and adventures type by nature (Stop laughing), so I took a day off from work and headed for the Dallas library.

After spending over an hour searching for a parking space that I didn’t have to pay for, I gave up and fed the meter. You would think that they would make those indoor parking garages big enough to handle trucks here in Texas. I walked into the building and asked for the Genealogical Section. After giving me a really strange look (I think it was because my T-shirt said "Genealogists don’t die, they are just doing hands-on research") She told me it was on the 8th floor. 30 minutes and 8 flights of stairs later I found the Genealogy department and the elevator. Signed in and asked the nice lady at the front where are the Census books? She pointed me too the back and told me they are in the Fish section. Walked back there smiling, only in Texas would they have a fish fry in the Library for us Genealogists, I couldn’t help but wander if they would have Cat fish or Bass.

I found the cabinets that said "Census" on them, but they didn’t have any books in them, only little films. They weren’t big enough for a VCR so I went in search of a librarian for help. The lady explained to me that they were microfilms and I needed to use one of the viewers to read them. OK, I was a little confused but figured that I would just fake it. (Still hadn’t found any fish, think that lady was pulling my leg) I got the Film for Alabama census 1910 and found an empty viewer and started working on threading it. Felt pretty good cause I got it threaded in less than 30 minutes and started reading the thing. I always knew that Alabama was a poor state, but it don’t seem fair that their census records were all fuzzy and hard to read. When I mentioned this to guy sitting next to me, he just shook his head and said "this is your first time here isn’t it?" Well I told him yes and he reached over and focused my viewer (I tell you what, this is a lot more complicated than I thought it would be.) I hunkered down to some serious research.

After a few minutes I found my first relative, and realized that I should have brought some paper and pen to take notes with. Lucky for me they got them little bity pencils and scraps of paper up near them files of little index cards. Spent about an hour making notes and looking up ancestors, found out lots of info and was amazed at the stuff in the records. I found out that one of my ancestors apparent name change was a result of the fact that he could neither read or write and I guess the census taker didn’t know how to spell Hocutt.

Another Adventure in Genealogy draws to a close with a few lessons learned:
1) Take a notebook and pencils with you to the library
2) Organize who you are looking for
3) Them viewers have focus thingies on them
and only patience and serious research will explain why names change

PS. Never did find the Fish, I still think they were pulling my leg.

NOTE: One of the most popular things I have written. This one appeared in the Dallas Genealogical Society Newsletter as well as on the Golden Gate Online Genealogical Society Newsletter.