My Spidey Census

Today, in 1790, the first US census was taken. Census information is one of our main family history tools. Orkney Archive are very lucky to be in partnership with the Orkney Family History Society who are not only nimble, dashing and eager to help, but industrious too. The Society have taken the often difficult to read hand-written census forms which we hold on microfilm:

...and transcribed them into indexed, easy to read books:

This makes tracing family members much easier and it is very simple to compare information from more than one census when you are dealing with A4 size books rather than different rolls of microfilm.

The Orkney Family History Society also sell copies of these books at between £2 and £8 for members and £3 and £10.50 for non-members, depending on which Parish you are purchasing. More information can be found here.

Although they are most useful, I shall probably not be consulting the census books for a while as I opened the box of Kirkwall transcriptions this morning and a sizeable spider jumped out. I attempted to catch it in a glass using my mad skills to deposit it safely on a window ledge, but panicked and squished half its legs off with the rim of the glass. Oh the guilt......