Prologue National Archives and Records Administration Archives Form

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my name is Connie Potter I'm with the National Archives and Records Administration and I'll be talking about census records I'm going to give a brief introduction then talk about the census records from 1790 until 1870 and then census records from 1880 until 1930 when working with census records it's important to remember a few things one this is oral history no one had to provide information to verify that what they said was correct and because it's oral information frequently people mispronounce names people didn't spell the names correctly also the census takers could have very bad handwriting so you can't always read the handwriting you don't always know who provided the information and so the information may be inaccurate because a neighbor or a family member that wasn't as familiar with everyone in the family might have provided the information also the census reflects what happened the previous ten years and we'll see some examples of that as I go through the questions and final