Genealogy Helps and Lookups

February 20, 2026

AF-1244: Counting People Before America, Why Governments Counted, And Where The Records Hide

If you use United States census records often, you notice that the questions change when the country changes. The format changes when technology changes. The people being counted change when laws and social structures change. That story does not begin in 1790. It reaches back through colonial recordkeeping and deep into Europe, because authorities have been counting people, households, and property for a long time.

For genealogists, this is practical. When there is no single national census, you can still find census style information, but it is often filed under labels that do not say “census.” Once you understand why earlier authorities counted people, you can often predict what kind of list might exist, what it might contain, and where it might be kept.

This article starts in Europe, steps into the colonial world, and ends at the doorstep of the first federal census. It is not a catalog of every record set. It is a guide to motives, methods, and the paperwork those methods produced...

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