Overview of the U.S. Census From Ancestry.com Wiki When the
Founding Fathers of the United States convened the
Constitutional Convention in 1787, they had no idea that they
would, in the course of their deliberations, create incredible
opportunities for generations of American family history
researchers. While Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution does
not directly mention the preservation of vital personal
information for future generations, it does instruct the
government to conduct a decennial census in an effort to fairly
apportion the number of federal representatives from each state,
as well as to decide on the amount of direct taxes to be levied.
That effort to take stock of the U.S. population every ten years
has produced, as a natural by-product, the greatest source of
genealogical information available to U.S. researchers. Because
they contain such important information about individuals,
families, and communities, U.S. census records are the most
frequently used records created by the federal go