Use common sense to identify your family of interest regardless how it is spelled. For example you are searching for Blumstein ancestors in Minsk, consider Blumshtein, Blumshtin, or even Bl[?]mstin as possible candidates. It is easy to filter out details once you have something to start working with.
Numbers in parenthesis indicates how many families shared the same last name in the given census. Let's say you have reached the census records from 1874 which potentially includes your earliest known ancestor or their parent family. Thus "Blumshtein (3)" gives you an idea that in 1874 there were only 3 Blumshtein households living in Minsk.
Test your theories
Now remember that our journey is not a straight line but a puzzle board with individual fitting together over time to give you the whole picture. Thus let's say you know your ancestor Joseph was born in 1880 and you have previously uncovered census of 1850 which listed Blumstein family with 2 young sons.
- Twenty four years later, in 1874 you can expect both sons to grow up and become heads of respective households themselves.
- Now you can legitimately assume that two out of three families in this census are your relatives!
- To take it further, if you are searching for a very rare last name and see three households in the city as big as Minsk, you can still reasonably assume that all three families are in fact related. Obviously looking at details will either confirm or dispel this theory.
Remember, to get the most out of your research, think in terms of the family clan, not individual family lines.
Most families were poor with relatives often living together due to economic necessity. Do you have a great-grandmother whose maiden name is now long forgotten?
What about that uncle Shmuel Meltser who visited your family when you were young? You knew he was your grandpa's "cousin", but no one remembers on which side of the family and how they were related. Well looking at the census index page you might come across records with related family written such as this:
Meltser + Blumstein, which indicates there was Blumstein person or a family which lived within Meltser family at the time of the census. Whenever possible I tend to clearly mark it as "related family" however for longer data sets I use plus sign as shortcut.
Migrations.
While some families lived in the same place for generations, other moved around a lot. In any case every family had cousins who moved out often to big cities looking for a better work and life. Depending on census takers this information sometimes found place within the census. Thus came from, added, or recorded indicates the person, likely head of the family was not born in the city where census took place but migrated from somewhere else. If you are really lucky, year of migration is recorded, otherwise you can still reasonably assume migration happened between after the last census took place. Additionally "recorded" or "by order" means a person sought and was granted an official permit to reside in the new place. This information opens new possibilities.
Let's say this record "Blumstein (3) 2-came from town A; 1-left to town B" will indicate that by the time of this census, two out of three Blumstein families were actually newcomers with both of them coming from the same town.
Again using somewhat rare name, you can conclude the following:
- Given two-thirds of the families being newcomers, you are more likely to come from one of these families.
- Assuming heads of the household were approximately of the same age, they were likely brothers or cousins who hailed from distant town.
- The fact that one of them later left to yet another town likely indicates that your line comes from the brother who stayed.
- You need to look for the town A in the earlier census to find your family.
- You might have another family line to be added to your tree based on records from town B.
Imagine, all these theories and findings were possible by looking at the census last name indexes page, without even seeing the details yet!
Now it is time to get to those records.
Happy Hunting.