Passably Equipped: Conquering PIP Censuses with the PASSED Method

I felt reasonably smart as I began my genealogy education. Not MENSA smart, mind you, but at least a bit above average. My ego took a bashing though, when I first hit the infamous roadblock—the PIP censuses (often mislabeled “pre-1850”) that only name the head of household with a string of tally numbers. It mystified me that anyone found them useful. An old spreadsheet had bested me until the PASSED Method emerged, made viable by an alignment tool I call the 90-60 Census Workbook.

What’s a PIP census?

Before I get deep into how I started beating the PIPs with the PASSED Method, let me explain the PIP initial. And I encourage you to use it and spread the word.

It has long been the standard in the U.S. genealogy field to refer to the federal censuses that fail to name anyone but the head of household “pre-1850” censuses. I used it myself in blog posts and product descriptions. When I began to document the entire households of my slaveholding ancestors for the creation of the Beyond Kin Project, I recognized the obvious. For the descendants of enslaved persons, the problem is a pre-1870 problem, not pre-1850. I have found it very clunky, however, to describe the censuses without using the years. I tried “name-poor” censuses. “Name-deprived.” Clunky. I needed a label that is at least as pithy as “pre-1850.” I wrangled with all sorts of acronyms—none satisfactory—until I happened upon “PIP” for “Partially Identified Persons.”

PIP censuses. Perfect. The word “pips” brings to mind those playing cards deemed the lesser cards of a deck or the backup singers for Gladys Knight. So that’s what I’ll call them from now on and hope it catches on: PIP censuses or PIPs—the tallies of partially identified persons.

Beating the PIP Censuses

So back to the problem at hand. I was being intellectually beaten down by the PIP censuses. How did I deal with it?

At first, like many others. I became a cheater, liar, and a quitter. I cheated by copying other people’s under-documented online trees, then lied to myself that I would find the supporting evidence after the fact. Or I just quit that line and picked up another, lying to myself that I’d come back to this one when I had a bit more time. Honestly, my family tree probably took far less of a quality hit from my quitting than my cheating.

There comes a moment, though, in every aspiring genohistorian’s life, when lying, cheating, and quitting just won’t cut it anymore. Your ego can’t stand being intimidated by the PIP census monster. You know, deep down, that there is no monster at all. It’s a chest of useful secrets, waiting for a diligent researcher with the right tools and skills.

If you’re ready to challenge your PIP fears—ready to be the diligent researcher your ego craves—read on to learn the PASSED Method.

Introducing the PASSED Method

I must prepare any newbies for the reality that finding answers in the PIPs takes a lot more time and brainpower than the ones with fully named households. Get ready for the long game, because it will be that. But also get ready for the joy of getting answers. Finally. The PASSED Method I am about to share will get you “passably equipped” to face the PIP. There are no instant, easy, or sure conquests.

I don’t think even the most brilliant Mensa brain would attempt to do the PASSED Method without a tool or tools to aid them. This isn’t something you can “work out in your head.” Quite honestly, doing it with paper is possible but unimaginably slow. There is a tool I recommend highly, the 90-60 Census Workbook, but you need to know that I designed it and sell it. So feel free to try it (14-day full refund) or find another option. The important point is this: invest a little time or money to equip yourself with a tool that can align values for you, and save hundreds of hours and loads of frustration in the long run.

I have fully conquered my fear of the PIP and even enjoy the challenge now. While I do not always get the answer I hoped to find, I never back down from a PIP challenge. I don’t quit, and I don’t cheat. And even if THE ANSWER eludes me, I gather so much valuable information along the way that it’s worth every minute.

The PASSED Method

As you begin, be clear on your research question. Who are you looking for that you would brave the PIP jungle? What do you know about the person already? The details make all the difference in coming out of the other end of PASSED with usable information and, hopefully, THE ANSWER.

I have conquered quite a few PIPs in recent years, and over time I realized I had a method. To help us all recall it, I’ve attached the acronym PASSED as a tickler for the six layers

P —> PROSPECT
A —> ALIGN
S —> SORT
S —> STUDY
E —> ELIMINATE
D —> DIG

Keep in mind that these items should be considered layers, rather than steps. You will be doing them all simultaneously at various stages of your research journey. We will look at them now in more detail.

PROSPECT

Your research has led you as far as you can go and left you hanging with what is most likely a PIP census and a big “which family is it” question. Like a prospector for gold, you will need to mine for all of the census heads of households who might answer your research question. Start with what is most likely, but be ready to go broader.

For example, let’s say I have traced your family back to a young man, age 25, living in Franklin, Heard County, Georgia, in 1850. The 1850 census identifies South Carolina as his birthplace. Now I want to find him in 1840, a PIP census. Where do I begin?

Prospecting Strategy

• The first and most obvious place to look is Franklin, Georgia. Unless I find the unlikely scenario of a 15-year-old head of household with this man’s name, I am looking for his father—same surname, given name unknown, with a son in the age category that includes 15-year-olds.
• If that fails, I will prospect surrounding counties for my guy or his father. I would also include any county in Georgia that my research has already suggested as a place where this family once lived.
• No luck there, I would broaden my prospecting to South Carolina, starting with any low-hanging fruit. If my 1850-and-later research has turned up mention of South Carolina towns and counties associated with relatives, I start there. If I have no clue, I search the census indexes, looking for the largest glob of people with that surname and start there, then the next-largest glob, and so on.
• If South Carolina comes up dry, I do the rest of Georgia, moving outward from Heard County, Georgia’s surrounding counties.
• If Georgia turns up dry, I look in Tennessee and Alabama, moving outward from Heard County, Georgia. If the new state and the old state have states in between, I would try those first.

You get the idea. The good news is, you rarely get to the last option. In most of your PASSED scenarios, you’ll find the people either in the new state or the old state. And meanwhile, you will be building a data set that will serve you in ways you can’t begin to count. Many of those people who were not his father are nevertheless his relatives. It’s worth your time.

ALIGN

The first clue that I might be able to conquer a PIP came in a class taught by Mark Lowe, who showed me that the power of the PIPs lies in aligning like data. The 1850 census has your guy at age 25, so the 1840 census would have him in the category with 15-year-olds. The 1830 census should list him in the category containing the 5-year-olds. You need a tool—bought, borrowed, or homemade—that lets you align a person’s census information. You want all of your guy’s census tally marks to line up together so you know which records might be him and which are not likely to be. This tool is vitally important to the success of the PASSED Method.

SORT

Many answers begin to emerge about ancestors when you look at the same data in different forms. Sometimes you want to see all the people with the same surname in a given county in a given decade, identifying which had a son or daughter of the age you are looking for. Sometimes you want to see (as you see above), all the records of a person with a specific given name and surname to see whether the records are matching. You might have a household full of sons in 1810 and begin to group the possible sons becoming heads of their own homes in the decades to come.

Create multiple versions of your data to answer your questions. This is one of the reasons I discourage using paper to do this. It is much easier to copy and paste this data into multiple different orders, depending on what you want to discover about the changes in the households over time.

STUDY

Let the tabular view of the PIP records begin to shape your questions about the family you are studying. You will find yourself getting to know every family with the same surname and that’s invaluable. Go line by line, looking for what makes a particular PIP record viable as a potential family member. Determine which factors may rule a record out or at least relegate it to the Not-Likely-But-Maybe pile in your research.

Let other documents aid you as you work through the prospects. Ask yourself about changes to the composition of the family, if you believe you have captured the right one over the decades. Are the young women departing the household around marriageable age? When are the sons departing? Are new children being born? Has a wife disappeared in one decade and been replaced by the next? Are new women being added to the household, perhaps daughters-in-law or the return of widowed daughters? Every change is a question to answer.

White descendants, take note of free nonwhite and enslaved household members. Are they staying roughly the same? Are the numbers growing? Do some appear to disappear from the household about the same time daughters marry—perhaps being given as gifts? While these PIPs are of limited value individually, they take on a rich value in comparison with one another. For descendants of enslaved persons, the movements of the white family are an essential tool in discovering your ancestor’s story. Every researcher should be conscious of every household member. Each is a piece of your ancestor’s story. Each is a clue.

ELIMINATE

Many of the PIP records you capture may turn out to be unhelpful to your original question. As you prove one unhelpful, eliminate it from consideration. Put it out of sight, but do not eliminate it from your research collection. The person might turn out to be related down the line. Or, you might forget you already eliminated the person and find yourself doing the work all over again. KNOW what you have done and what you have not.

The process of elimination makes manageable what originally seemed unmanageable. Your list of prospects will diminish, sometimes rapidly. Where you started with twenty households, maybe only three will be left.

DIG

The layers of work above will continually send you back to other forms of research. I recommend you create trees for the remaining prospects in a private tree space. Let the tree tools work for you. Find marriage and death records. Military service records. Anything that will help you narrow the prospect list further. And eventually, if all goes well, you find the evidence that supports one specific family. And, unlike so many who post their trees online, you actually have a trail of proof.

Store and Repeat

Make sure you keep everything you gather in the PASSED Method. Even in ruling out a PIP record, you are gathering evidence in support of the PIP records you finally call family. I keep all PIP records in the same spreadsheet, though I either hide the ones I eliminate or move them to a Not Related worksheet in my workbook. If you’re using paper, create a filing system that allows you to keep these. Make sure that it allows you to find the records again easily when a record later shows up with one of the seemingly not related people being named in your ancestor’s will.

Celebrate That You PASSED!

This is where brick walls come tumbling down. This is where beginners become seasoned contributors to the great family tree. It gets easier every time you do it. You PASSED.

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