While the 1890 US federal census is no longer with us, thanks to a fire in the 1930s (a few fragments survive, but you’ve got to be incredibly lucky to have an ancestor who appears in one of them, though some people do), there are other ways we can find out what went on in our families in the twenty-year gap between 1880 and 1900. One of these alternate methods of tracking our 1890 ancestors is with state census records. This is what you need to know about them.
While not every state did a state census, plenty of them did. Usually beginning around 1845 to 1855, many states in the union started having their own individual censuses in between the federal ones. They were almost always done in years that ended in a 5, with a few exceptions (like the 1892 New York state census).
The amount of information you may find on one of these census records varies by state. Some of them have the basic information regarding the head of the household, with everyone else relegated to being represented as numbers. Others have detailed information on everyone in a household, including ages, birthdays, marriage dates, immigration information, and more.
Whether a particular state census has a little bit of information on it or a lot, it will still be useful to you in placing your 1890 ancestors. In fact, if the state your ancestors lived in did more than one of these state censuses, you may be able to fill in more of your family information than you would have with just the 1890 US federal census. For example, a state that did an 1885 and an 1895 census would provide you twice the information the 1890 census would have, thus allowing you to fill in more gaps on your family tree.
Where do you find out what states did state censuses, and what years they did them? You can ask at your state archives. Every state has an official archive repository of some kind. You may be able to request lookups there or rent microfilm of the census to look for your ancestors. You may also be able to find state census information for free on FamilySearch.org or borrow the microfilm from the Family History Library’s Salt Lake City primary branch to use at your local one.
An excellent source of state census records is on Ancestry.com, which has practically every state census ever done, with searchable indexes and scanned images of the actual pages. There is an admission fee there, naturally, but you might be able to get a free trial for a couple of weeks if you’ve never had an account there before.
If you are still looking for information on your family that the absence of the 1890 census has been keeping secret from you, try one of these methods to locate a state census from that time period. You will be glad you did.