Census Dates

[Kit]

When you record a census on your tree do you record the date as 1901, 1911 etc or use the exact date?

Ancestry and FTM just use the year but I had to put in a date for the 1921 census for a baby as it was showing she was on the census before she was born.

It doesn't matter but it got me wondering how others do it.

[Merry]

Personally, I just put the year, but when I link the entry to the source for the information that has the exact date included in case I don't remember! If said a child was born in Feb 1911 my FH program woud consider that OK with also living at a particular address in '1911'.

I do record the exact date for US census records because they don't seem to be standardised.

Having said that, if children are living with their parents I generally only enter the census data for the parents and my brain is used to generally not seeing any census info for a child until they leave home; I just know to click one of the parents to see where they were living. If I see a child with census data recorded that tells me they were not living with their parents, which is a better trigger for me than everyone having all the info recorded!!

[Kit]

FTM recorded X as :
residence 1921 wherever
birth Jan 1921

so it looked like they were born after the census, which doesn't make sense, or look 'right' to me.

Your practice of not recording census for children is a good one, but too late for me to implement.

I don't think my sources have the date the census was taken in them, except for the 1921 ones, which FMP puts in their transcription information. I'll have a look and see if I can amend the sources to contain the dates as that would be useful.

[maggie_4_7]

I just leave it as the year unless it contradicts another life event like death, marriage or emigrating etc then I add the complete date on that particular individual.

As for adding census to children, yes I do so I know where they are at a glance without delving into the parents whereabouts and census.

[Jill]

Mostly I just use the year, unless there is another event that year when it can be useful to know which side of the census it occurred.