Most American Families Hit a Wall Around 1850

Why the record trail thins out in the mid-1800s and which records stop first



Most American family trees trace back smoothly to about 1850 and then stop. That is usually not a failure of your research. Several unrelated changes in record keeping converge in the middle of the 1800s, and each one removes a tool you had been relying on.


Before 1850 the Census Counted People Without Naming Them


The seventh census, governed by an act of 23 May 1850, was the first in which every free person's name was to be listed, not just the head of the household. It was also the first to give an age, sex, color, and birthplace for each person on the page. From 1790 through 1840 the schedules named the head of household and reduced everyone else to tally marks in age and sex columns. A household you can read as a list of names in 1850 becomes an anonymous count of children in 1840.


Birth and Death Registration Came Decades Later


Civil registration of births and deaths developed slowly in the United States. Some U.S. states did not record births until the 1900s. The starting dates vary widely by region:


  • New England: statewide registration of births, marriages, and deaths began between 1841 and 1897, and town clerks kept register books as early as the 1600s.
  • Middle Atlantic: it is unusual to find vital records before 1881 in New York or 1885 in Pennsylvania, outside the larger cities.
  • South: laws requiring civil registration of births and deaths were enacted between 1899 and 1919.
  • Midwest: statewide registration began between 1880 and 1920.
  • West: most areas began statewide registration between 1903 and 1920.


Nationally the picture is the same: all states were not inside the federal birth and death registration areas until 1933. Marriages are the exception worth chasing, since counties and towns generally began recording them as soon as they were organized, sometimes in the early 1700s in the South, because a marriage carried property rights.


Federal Paperwork on Arrivals Was Thin Before 1820


The Steerage Act, effective 1 January 1820, first required a ship's master to hand the collector of customs a list of passengers giving each name, sex, age, and occupation. Before that, the National Archives says documentation varied significantly because no single agency was creating or keeping it. Naturalization was equally scattered: before 1906 any court of record could grant citizenship, and no central index exists. It was also not a federal requirement that an exact birthplace be recorded on a passenger list or on naturalization papers until 1906, so an arrival or a citizenship file from the earlier decades often names only a country.


The Records That Were Kept Did Not All Survive


The phrase "burned counties" came out of Virginia research, where many county records were destroyed by courthouse fires or the Civil War, and similar losses to floods, tornadoes, theft, and neglect turn up in every state. Keep in mind that county boundaries may have changed over time so you need to look in the records for the county that existed at the time your ancestor was living there, and before a county was organized there was no county clerk to record anything. Earlier still, a birth was sometimes entered only in a parish register held by the congregation rather than by a government.


Tips on Researching Pre-1850 Families


Taking your tree back past 1850 means working with records beyond the census and vital records: newspapers, county histories, probate records, church records, land deeds, court records, tax lists, and others. A good place to begin is FamilySearch full text search, which includes many of the older county records in an easily searchable form; the FamilySearch catalog will show which records are found in full text search. Contacting a local genealogical or historical society may also be helpful. We have an extensive records directory that can help you quickly locate the available records for a specific U.S. county or town.



Need help finding more records? We have genealogy research services available. You can also try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1.3 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.


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