A Brief Look at Danish Census Records

Hello Everyone! How’s it going this week! Off to do some genealogy right? Right! Good answer. I love talking all things genealogy. I especially love explaining how Scandinavian records work because I was in your shoes a few years ago and now I want to share what I know with you.

Let’s start with once you have found your immigrant ancestor’s town of origin, you want to look for them in Danish records. What are the two major record groups for any Scandinavian country? Census records and church records.

Danish Census Records

First, you want to start looking for your ancestor in census records because that’s the easiest place to start. It’s also a place where you can see the whole family and not just a child and his/her parents. Where do you find Danish census records? The Danish Demograph Database and Danish Family Search are the two websites I use. I go to the Database first because they have them all indexed and you can search typed records instead of trying to read handwriting. I use Danish Family Search also for reading typed records, but if I’m logged in then I can see the original census records as well.

This is what the Danish Demograph Database looks like once you’ve found your ancestor after a simple search.

Sometimes the database will ask if you want this page to be translated. It may translate the whole page or it may select a few things and leave the rest. Either way the translation part helps.

Then here’s the Danish Family Search digital copy of the same family in the original 1787 Danish census.

Do you see why I like to find them in the typed database instead of searching in the handwritten pages? Yes, this is the actual family for both records. So that’s my method of research. If you want to make it easier on yourself, then search the typed, indexed Danish census records first, then go find them in the original census books.

If you want to learn more about Danish census records, then check out this FamilySearch.org article here. In addition, my blog posts about Norwegian census records and Swedish census records are available.

Good luck and happy hunting!

Tiffany

P.S. Have you signed up for my Wednesday Wisdom email yet? New subscribers get a free download of all of the American and Scandinavian websites that I use in my business in one easy list. Plus, this is where I give tips and tricks to take your genealogy deeper and let you know about my latest blog post. Enjoy!