What is a Census Table?

Census tables show all of the census information for a selected individual's ancestors in a single table, making it easy, at a glance, to tell which ancestors need further research and where and when they are likely to be found. The tables are generated automatically from your genealogy data. All that is required is to add a record ID or name to the configuration. For a detailed look at how to create a standalone census table checkout Configuring a Standalone Census Table.

Census tables are only created if the selected individual has ancestors who were living, or possibly living, during the range of years specified by the configured census years; only applicable ancestors will be included in the table. #Gigatrees places no limits on which years may be configured. In the U.S., users will likely select U.S. Federal Census years; they may also include U.S. State census years. Users from the United Kingdom, or whose ancestors immigrated from there may select UK Census years. You can also mix and match. Gigatrees automatically sorts the years from earliest to latest. When no #census years are defined, Gigatrees will automatically determine the census years to be considered by detecting any of the following: GEDCOM census records, GEDCOM residence records whose referenced sources mention the word "Census" in the source's title, and other GEDCOM events whose event descriptor type ( TYPE ) includes the word "Census".

Census tables are composed of rows showing every applicable ancestor, and columns showing every configured census year (when applicable). You can configure a range of years to skip for any ancestor. This will be useful when you want to clean up your table, by removing any entries where your ancestor did not live in a census location during the same period. You can, for instance, skip years for which immigrants could not have appeared in the census years in question, or if your research indicates that an ancestor lived in a location for which census records did not exist during those years, which is common for early U. S. Federal census records. For each census record found, a location code is placed in the table cell associated with the record's ancestor and year. Location codes are extracted from state names using ISO-3166 location codes. For Australia, Canada, Ireland and the United States, 2-letter state codes are used, and for England, North Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, Gigatrees uses 3-letter state codes. All countries used 3-letter country codes. If no location code is found, an 'X' will be displayed instead. The location codes are linked to source records when referenced by the census event. When hovering your cursor over the location code, a window will popup showing any details known about the source and its reference, including enumeration districts when detected. Clicking on the location code will take you to the source record. If the person has no census record for any of the census years configured, an "m" (for missing) is displayed in the table cell. If it is determined that the year does not apply to an ancestor, either because they were skipped, or because Gigatrees determined that there were not living, a "-" (for does-not-apply) will be displayed; Gigatrees uses birth dates, either real or estimated and death dates, along with the <MaxLifeSpan> setting when making this determination. If it is determined that none of the census years apply to an ancestor, they will be omitted from the table. If no census event was found for an ancestor whose living status cannot be determined, a question mark "?" (for unknown status) will be displayed.

Gigatrees also supports an (optional) value for an ancestors's census event that can be set using the standard GEDCOM cause field ( CAUS ). The values allowed are Named, Given and Counted. A value of "Named" indicates that both an ancestors's given name and surname were provided in the census record, as would be true for the male heads-of-household and, in U.S. Federal census records, children in more recent years. When set, the location code will be shown in bold and the information will be added to the source reference popup. A value of "Given" indicates that only an ancestor's given name was provided, such as would be true of a woman whose maiden name was not provided. When set, the location code will be underlined and the popup updated. A value of "Counted" indicates that a person was counted in the census, but no name is provided, such as would be true of early U.S. Federal census records that only provide head counts for family members and slaves (never forgetting who we are!). When set, the location code will be shown in italics and the popup updated.

When a census table is configured for an individual, a new tab will be placed on that individual's profile page linking directly to the census table. Census tables can be configured for any number of individuals. Whenever more than one individual is configured, an index page will be linked from the menu. If only a single individual is configured, the menu will link directly to that individual's census table.

As you can see, census tables are quite versitale, and pack of lot of information into square small enough to fit on your computer screen.