New York State Census, 1915 - FamilySearch Historical Records

United States  New York

What is in the Collection?
This collection is a cooperative project with Ancestry.com and the New York State Archives. FamilySearch is publishing an index which links to images at Ancestry.com.

The records are handwritten on preprinted forms. The records are arranged by County, Assembly District, Election District and Block.

New York began taking formal state censuses in 1825 both to determine representation in state government and to produce statistics the government might find useful. The state took a census every ten years from 1825 through 1875, another in 1892, and then every ten years again from 1905 to 1925. Unfortunately, many of the early census records have been lost. Two copies were made of both the 1915 and 1925 census. One copy was retained in the County and the other copies were sent to the New York State Archives.

State censuses like the 1915 census are useful because they fall in between federal census years and provide an interim look at a population. The 1915 New York census also took place during an era of heavy immigration; between the 1910 and 1920 federal censuses, the state would add almost 1.3 million inhabitants.

What Can this Collection Tell Me?
The census includes the following information:


 * Name of street and house number
 * Name of each person living in home on 1 June 1925 (Children born after 1 June 1925 were not recorded)
 * Relationship of each person to head of household
 * Color or race, gender and age on last birthday
 * Place (country) of birth
 * Citizen or alien
 * Number of years in the United States
 * Occupation
 * Inmates of institutions
 * Address where living at time of admission and date of admission

How Do I Search the Collection?
To begin your search it is helpful to know:
 * The name
 * Identifying information such as age and where they lived

Search by Name by visiting the Collection Page:' Fill in your ancestor’s name on the search page. This search will return a list of possible matches. Compare the information about those in the list to what you already know about your own ancestors to determine if this is the correct family or person. Keep in mind:


 * There may be more than one person in the records with the same name.
 * You may not be sure of your own ancestor’s name.
 * Your ancestor may have used different names, or variations of their name, throughout their life.
 * If your ancestor used an alias or a nickname, be sure to check for those alternate names.
 * Even though these indexes are very accurate they may still contain inaccuracies, such as altered spellings, misinterpretations, and optical character recognition errors if the information was scanned.

For tips about searching on-line collections see the on-line article FamilySearch Search Tips and Tricks.

What Do I Do Next?
When you have located your ancestor’s record, carefully evaluate each piece of information given. Make a photocopy of the record, or extract the genealogical information needed. These pieces of information may give you new biographical details. Add this new information to your records of each family. The information may also lead you to other records about your ancestors.

I Found Who I was Looking for, What Now?

 * Use the age listed to determine an approximate birth date. This date along with the place of birth can help you find a birth record. Birth records often list biographical and marital details about the parents and close relatives other than the immediate family.
 * Use the race information to find records related to that ethnicity such as records of the Freedman’s Bureau or Indian censuses.
 * Use the naturalization information to find their naturalization papers in the county court records. It can also help you locate immigration records such as a passenger list which would usually be kept records at the port of entry into the United States.
 * Birth places can tell you former residences and can help to establish a migration pattern for the family.
 * If they are subject to military service they may have military files in the State or National Archives.
 * Occupations listed can lead you to employment records or other types of records such as school records. Child and teenage occupations are often listed as “at school.”
 * It is often helpful to extract the information on all families with the same surname in the same general area. If the surname is uncommon, it is likely that those living in the same area were related.
 * Be sure to extract all families before you look at other records. The relationships given will help you to organize family groups. The family groupings will help you identify related families when you discover additional information in other records.
 * Married family members may have lived nearby but in a separate household so you may want to search an entire town, neighboring towns, or even a county.
 * You may be able to identify an earlier generation if elderly parents were living with or close by a married child.
 * You may be able to identify a younger generation if a young married couple still lived with one of their sets of parents.
 * Additional searches may be needed to locate all members of a particular family in the census.
 * The census may identify persons for whom other records do not exist.

I Can't Find Who I'm Looking for, What Now?

 * Look for variant spellings of the names. You should also look for nicknames and abbreviated names.
 * Look for an index. There are often indexes at the beginning of each volume. Local genealogical and historical societies often have indexes to local records.
 * Search the indexes and records of nearby counties.
 * Try alternative search methods such as only filling in the surname search box (or the given name search box) on the landing page leaving the other box empty and then click on search. This should return a list of everyone with that particular name. You could then browse the list for individuals with the same family number.
 * There is also the possibility that a family was missed in the census.

Known Issues with This Collection
For a full list of all known issues associated with this collection see the attached article. If you encounter additional problems, please email them to [mailto:support@familysearch.org support@familysearch.org]. Please include the full path to the link and a description of the problem in your e-mail. Your assistance will help ensure that future reworks will be considered.

Citing this Collection
When you copy information from a record, you should list where you found the information; that is, cite your sources. This will help people find the record again and evaluate the reliability of the source. It is also good to keep track of records where you did not find information, including the names of the people you looked for in the records. Citations are available for the collection as a whole and each record or image individually.

Collection Citation:

Record Citation (or citation for the index entry):