Documentation

Research

Site Tools

Contact Us

To Interested Genealogists: 

You are welcome to work with the IPUMS data, but should be aware of its severe limitations for genealogical purposes. Only the 1850-1880, and 1920 samples contain names of individuals. Moreover, the 1850 and 1880 files are 1-in-100 samples of the population, meaning there is a 1% chance of finding any particular person in the data. The 1920 sample will be 1-in-100 when completed in 1998, but is currently only 1-in-200 (a .5% chance of containing a specific person). The 1860 and 1870 files are even smaller 1-in-500 samples. 

We have very limited resources and at present are generally reserving access to our beta test extract system to academic and public policy researchers. In any case, the extract system would not be very helpful for genealogical research. The system is not a search engine. You cannot search for any particular name in the data, and the system will not select out cases on the basis of name. 

If you wish to try your luck with the data, you should also be aware, if you are not already, that the data is "raw" (i.e., it is just strings of numbers with names and addresses embedded). Each line is an individual or household. The IPUMS codebook is required to interpret the numbers. Most software is unable to handle files as large as these--especially word processors (the smallest file, 1900, is about 45Meg decompressed). SPSS or SAS are the most frequently used programs to deal with the data. A spreadsheet or database program might also be used, though they would require large amounts of memory or disk space. 

There is another site on the web where the 1880 PUMS has been broken into individual households and which contains a program to search the data: http://www.genealogy.org/~1880-census. Other such sites may exist or be in development. (See the IPUMS Links Page)