The first census of any use to house historians was
produced in 1841.The name of every person in each household was written down against their address with details of their occupation, marriage status and children.
After 1851 until 1901 other facts were added such as the age of each person, their relationships within the family (wife, son, and daughter), age (rounded to nearest 5 years for adults) occupation and place of birth.
The sort of information you will find is -
Address Not always easy to see precisely unless the house was a named house or farm. You may have to settle for simply knowing the name of the road or the village.
Name The surname with at least one forename. Bear in mind that people often used pet names or even changed it so look out for other people in the household to help find the one you want
Relationship How the individual is related to the head of the household.
Condition Whether married, widowed or single.
Age From 1851 onwards, the census is usually as accurate as the person providing the information could know or guess.
Occupation The rank, profession or occupation can be useful in helping to establish that you have found the correct person, especially if they share a relatively common name or have changed their first name for instance.
Where born this also helps to identify individuals, although for a number of reasons it frequently contains mistakes.
Find my Past have many records that are free including the 1881 census Click here to access these.
The local library should have copies of the census on film or cd
A word of warning about transcriptions
A lot of the census has been transcribed and indexed on line which is good news, otherwise you would be looking through reams of paper to find your occupier. In a town that would be next to impossible.
But the bad news is that sometimes the transcriber has had a guess at the name of a place and there are some really bizarre examples which if somebody took half a minute to think about it could have been corrected.
The best place to view the census is online. Most sites are subscription only or pay as you go, although thanks to the Church of the Latter Day Saints (who have done so much to help family historians) the 1851 census is free.
BLANK US CENSUS FORMS
We do not supply blank U.S census forms but they can be obtained at the Ancestry site