Our county guides for genealogists and family historians contain information on state census availability for each county and where to find those records if they do exist.įor substitutes and other options, see the additional resources section of this guide.
In some cases, counties may have maintained copies of records from these first three censuses - if you're seeking census records for the 1825, 1835, or 1845 state censuses, it's best to investigate directly at the local level by checking with county repositories. Most records have been lost - due to the 1911 State Capitol fire, all copies of this state census held by New York at that time were completely destroyed.įortunately, county clerks maintained duplicate copies for their counties from the 1855 census onward, so not all nineteenth-century census records were lost - read below for ways to access subsequent state censuses. The first three state censuses for New York are difficult to access and largely unavailable online. New York State Census By Year 1825, 1835, and 1845 New York State Censuses This doesn't mean to ignore census records - information gathered in a state or federal census can be essential to finding another record like a vital record or immigration document. This is why census information should serve as the start of an investigation - everything found in the census should ideally be verified by other genealogical sources like birth, marriage, or death records. Furthermore, sometimes the family or head of the household wasn't home, and the information was collected from a neighbor. There is no guarantee that the head of the household was a reliable informant - things could be misremembered or even deliberately obfuscated. When conducting the census, the information was gathered by a census taker, who usually asked the head of the household. It's important to remember that information found in census records is generally reliable, but can sometimes be inaccurate. If you have never searched a New York state census before, use this guide to get started - you can almost certainly uncover some exciting new information.
As with the federal census, the New York state census only began recording the names of all household members in the mid-1800s.įor most researchers though, the New York state census is an absolutely essential resource - many censuses contain wonderfully rich and deep information that will help the researcher find more records and fill in the details of their family's New York story. There some limitations to this resource - certain years of census records have been mostly lost in part due to a massive fire at the New York State Library in 1911.Īdditionally, the information included also varies by year. The state census was officially abolished in 1931, so the 1925 state census is the last one that exists. The second Constitution of the State of New York, written in 1821, required that a state census be taken in 1825 and every ten years after that - censuses were then taken ever ten years until 1875.ĭue to a number of political and bureaucratic conflicts, no state census was taken in 1885 - New York State wound up taking a census in 1892, skipped the census which should have occurred in 1895, and then resumed census-taking every ten years in the fifth year of each decade - 1905, 1915, and 1925. Unfortunately, some state census records have been periodically lost or destroyed, but many have been preserved and are available to search online. Government every ten years beginning in 1790) and state censuses (administered by the State of New York every ten years beginning in 1825), one could theoretically locate a family every five years, creating a fantastic framework for further research and uncovering a lot of useful information in the process. Though the information contained in them varies throughout history, census records are incredibly useful because they were designed to capture key details about all households in a given geographic area, including very relevant and useful information for family history researchers.īy using both federal censuses (administered by the U.S. Why should all researchers be using both federal censuses and New York state censuses? These records often form the backbone of family history research. This guide provides an overview of every New York state census, what kind of information can be found within each one, and where researchers can search New York state censuses online.