1870 Second Enumeration

​I recently presented “Censational Census Strategies” for Legacy Family Tree Webinars.  In it, I mentioned the second enumeration to the 1870 census.

The 1870 census is purported to be the worst US census ever taken.[1] There were enough people missed and enough errors that a second enumeration was ordered for a few large cities, including New York City.  This second enumeration was taken in January of 1871.  How can you find this second enumeration?

If you have an Ancestry.com subscription, you can do a search for the 1870 census. Once you get there, on the right side of the screen you will see "Browse this collection" and you can specify your state (NY) county (NY) and then use the dropdown for the town and you will see something like: “New York Ward 1 District 1,” then ”New York Ward 1 District 1 (2nd Enum).” You can then browse through the pages.  However, you may not know the Enumeration District (ED.)

If you don’t have an Ancestry.com subscription, you may have access to HeritageQuest databases from home using your library card.  This is one of the databases many libraries provide to their patrons, for free, from home.  Look on your library’s website for something like “Research“ or “Databases” and then for a Genealogy or History category.  Again, if you don’t know your ancestor’s ED, this might not be so useful.

I would suggest you just do a straight up name search for your ancestor, and try to find them on both enumerations. If you can only find them on one, pick 3 or 4 neighbors on that enumeration, and then look for them on the other enumeration, and see if you can't find your ancestor. Hope that helps!


[1] http://stevemorse.org/census/1870secondenumeration.html