Minnesota State Census Indexes free, and on-line

Not having a personal subscription to Ancestry.com, I'm thrilled that the Minnesota Historical Society now has available on its website an index for the Minnesota State Census, 1849-1905. Best of all, it's free! It can be found at http://people.mnhs.org/census/. Though the front page only mentions the decennial 1865-1905 state censuses, the index covers the pre-statehood censuses too, including the 1849 Territorial Census, the 1857 Census (taken to prove there were enough residents to become a state), and several very local censuses taken in 1853 and 1855.

The index works like the MHS's birth and death certificates indexes, giving the researcher more control over searches: drop-down menus for "exact," "contains," "starts with," and "ends with" for both last and first names and the ability to limit the search by year and county, as well as Soundex. Some of these censuses use initials only, making "starts with" one of my favorite features. And WOTR (Write On The Record), MHS's comment feature, can be used on the census index. This means that you can report errors and MHS will make corrections. You can purchase copies of the images over the net, too, for electronic delivery.

The eight counties in the extreme southwest part of the state are an interesting study on the 1857 census. All are heavily populated with highly educated settlers, in addition to the farmers. These people have been called 'mythical,' because they exactly fill pages in the various counties, and don't show up again in 1860. Of course, in March of 1857 Inkpaduta and his band went through that area on their way from Spirit Lake, Iowa, where they wiped out several settlements. The settlers in Minnesota banded together for safety, but many left the area. You can read more about the census in this region in Minnesota Genealogical Journal: 10, September 1993, and about Spirit Lake in Legends, Letters and Lies: Readings on the Spirit Lake Massacre, both available from my bookstore. Many saw Spirit Lake as the precursor of the U.S./Dakota War in 1862.

This is a great addition to the researcher's arsenal!