Not all censuses records are created equal.
Family lists were compiled at various times and places. These lists of residents provide primary information about family members from the second half of the nineteenth century (1858-1897) when no main censuses were conducted.
Authorities were interested in keeping track of boys approaching the age of military draft, and keeping information about growing families where sons were moving out and forming new households on their own.
For this reason, family lists usually recorded only males and often included the copy of the family record from the previous main census. Thus family lists provide insight where full details of the previous census did not survive. Lately more and more copies of such family lists seem to surface from the first half of the nineteenth century, especially from places in Kiev governorate, named Skvira, Lipovets and Tarascha districts, where in 1835 clerks or compilers copied details from the earlier census (either 1816 or 1818 depending on the family).
These two-in-one censuses provide a lot of information to family historians:
- It moves back earliest known fact about the family in question by few decades and possibly several generations back in time.
- More names are discovered since due to deaths and migrations people would disappear in the later censuses.
- Since relatives often lived together, this provides for discovery of related family names and determine degree of relationship to one's family.
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