Census Taker User Guide Now that you have downloaded and installed Census Taker 1.1.1 to your computer from http://www.forthecousins.com/censustaker, here is a look at how to use it. Before you start, you will want to create your up-to-date GEDCOM file. GEDCOM is a widely used format for a text file that contains every person in your family tree and all of the facts you have entered for them. If you use family tree software to maintain your tree, it probably has the ability to export a GEDCOM file. If you are keeping your family tree only on ancestry.com, not in any other software, you can generate a GEDCOM of any tree you own. The main screen, seen below, is very small and simple because it s an easy 3-step process to product a report that shows you during which U.S. Federal Census years (1790-1940) every person in your family tree should have been counted. In short, you will: 1. Click Import GEDCOM 2. Click Analyze GEDCOM, answer any prompts that come up, and 3. Click View Results So let s get started! Click the Import GEDCOM button on the Census Taker main screen.
You will be prompted to locate your GEDCOM file on your computer. Browse your way to your file, select it and click Open. Next you ll be prompted for a name and location for your results file. This will be a text file, and you may want to give it a name that matches your GEDCOM name.
Now that you have opened your GEDCOM file and named your results file, go to Step 2 and click the Analyze GEDCOM button. Even if your file contains thousands of people, this process can go very, very quickly. It will stop for assistance only when it finds a birth or death date that it needs some help with. The program can understand all of the basic date formats, and it knows what to do if the date begins with ABT (about), BEF (before) or AFT (after).
But if the person s birth or death date is a range of years (e.g. BET 1920 and 1930, as illustrated below), you need to make a choice. You must enter a 4-digit year in the box and click OK (or press enter). In the example shown below, we ve entered 1920 because there is a possibility William H Muse was alive for the 1920 census. Below is an example of a year with a slash in it, 1739/40. This format may be imposed by your family tree software program for certain years in the 1600s and 1700s. Note: If you leave the box blank, you will see a little warning message. It s best to enter a year even if you know you will be skipping this person because they were born so long ago. In a future release of Census Taker, you will not be prompted to enter a year for someone who died before the 1790 census or was born after the 1940 census.
The process will continue, asking for your input when needed, until you see a message that your file is complete. Note: If you are missing either the birth year or the death year for someone, they will be assumed to have lived no more than 100 years. If you are missing both the birth and death year, the person will be skipped. Now that you have finished analyzing your GEDCOM, go to Step 3 and click View Results.
Below is a piece of my results file to show you how it is formatted. Each person in your tree is listed with when they were born and died, and each census year during which they were alive.
To help you be really productive as the 1940 census becomes available, you may want to import your text file into a word processor, such as Microsoft Word. Then you can do a Search & Replace to find each instance of 1940 and highlight it in yellow. Here s how my file looks: At this point, you re done and ready to get busy searching the census records!
Census Taker also has a menu bar at the top with the same commands as the buttons. This will be more convenient for you if you like to use your keyboard more than your mouse.
The Help menu gives you access to additional information.
How to Use Census Taker contains complete instructions, as shown below.
About Census Taker shows you the version number of the program you are running: Choose Keep the Programs Coming, on the Help menu if ever you would like to report a problem with Census Taker, suggest improvements, or let me know what other genealogy task you would like to automate. Thank you, and happy hunting!