Remember the days of the Archives of Michigan's SeekingMichigan website and the availability of all those great records and information? Have you been frustrated by its replacement the Michiganology.org website? Yes it is great for the Michigan death certificates, but it has lacked of all those great records like the early Michigan state census along with 1884 and 1894 surviving state census and those numerous finding aids.
One tip given out about six months ago was to use the Internet Archive WayBackMachine to bring up a desired finding aid. It can be hit and miss but it does work if you know what was there to re-locate again. Using Internet Archive we have re-located many finding aids for various Macomb County records at the Archives of Michigan. Remember you are searching the WayBackMachine for the www.seekingmichigan.org website.
While watching a webinar today some multi-tasking was done to find back a list of what 1884 and 1894 state census enumerations survive for which Michigan counties. (Sadly, as most of us know Macomb County is not one of those counties.) While doing so another list was found on the ResearchWiki regarding Michigan Census (last updated in January 2021) that had a bunch of links to Michiganology which seemed useless since only the images of the Michigan Death Certificates have been there since the site's slow start.
BUT ... clicking on one of those links a discovery was made! (A great example of the tip to go back and re-check a resource or website at a later date to see what has been added since you last searched. Of course, it took some digging to figure out how to find this discovery on the Michiganology site itself. This actual discovery was made via another website.)
Look What We Found ... Michigan State Census!
Apparently buried on the Michiganology website are the various state census images including a simple search engine. When the census images arrived on Michiganology we do not know but likely by January 2021 without any fanfare. For some reason this helpful and valuable collection does not clearly appear on the Research tab not even when you just Browse Collections. This collection does not clearly appear under the Advanced Search tab either. And the Custom Search does not give any clues/indications either.
How do you find them? You have to do some digging.
The first route is to go to the Research tab of the Michiganology.org website. Select the Browse All Collections. (You won't find them if you go straight to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.) THEN on the resulting page select the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Here you will get a table of ten collection results. Select Archives of Michigan. The revised table will give you three sub-collections: Archival Collections on Microfilm; Archival Collections; and Audiovisual Materials.
Select Archival Collections. It is here you will find two collections: RG 2019-13 Archives of Michigan Legacy Digital Collections, ca. 1845-2018; and RG 81-46 Michigan Statehood Documents, 1797-1836. Select RG 2019-13 Archives of Michigan Legacy Digital Collections, ca. 1845-2018 and the table shows three sub-collections: Michigan State Census Records, 1827-1894; Archives of Michigan Finding Aids; and Archives of Michigan Map Collection. Select the Michigan State Census Records, 1827-1894.
Sidebar: The Archives of Michigan Finding Aids here do not appear to be the various ones from the old SeekingMichigan site and it appears to be only partially done at this time as not all counties seem to be represented.
From this resulting table you can search all the individual census years (1827, 1834, 1845, 1854, 1864, 1874, 1884 and 1894) at one time using the Search Within This Collection located on the left-side blue column. You can then Refine Your Selection by selecting a specific county or counties from the presented results list. Or you could select a specific census year and search just that year.
The search engine here is very simplistic. The search results list simply shows the record image thumbnail, a Title/Last Name which is actually the Year County, Township (City) and image number along with a column for Place. The Description/First Name column is blank. Click the image thumbnail or title to view the record image. Underneath the enlarged record image is an abstract where you will find the abstracted names listed as Lastname, First along with other information.
So we suggest searching either by just a Surname or by Surname, First. The simplistic search appears to read Surname, First as an exact "Surname, First" search. So as with any search engine play around with spelling.
The image viewer appears to be the same as for the Michigan Death Certificates. So if you are familiar with that you are good to go.
The second route is to go to the Advanced Search tab. This route is more direct to the searching. It actually brings you to a specialized search specifically for the Death Records Collection meaning it has search parameters based on what was indexed/abstracted from the death certificates. So from here, select the Custom Search option.
Under the Custom Search in the Matching search parameter type the Surname or Surname, First. Then in the Within search parameter select the radial circle for Specific Collections and type Michigan State Census. A pop-up list will appear from which you can select a specific census year such as "1894 Michigan State Census" or the entire collection with "Michigan State Census Records, 1827-1894." At this time you can also narrow your search to a specific County by using the Add Another Field under Matching. Type the name of the county and change the "Any Field" to "County." Then search to get your results table/list/grid.
Regardless of which route you take to get to the Michigan State Census, for best search results make sure you understand what is actually available for each census enumeration year. What counties and even what townships of those counties are included. You will not find what does not exist so save time and arm yourself with the knowledge you need to search better.
What else is buried on Michiganology? We are not sure. It appears a bit of digging is needed to see if more genealogy treasures have been quietly added to Michiganology.
Have fun finding your buried treasures!
See you soon someday at our favorite library!
LE
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