The federal Decennial Census has been conducted every 10 years since 1790. It is mandated by Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, and is supposed to count every person living in the United States.
Who has been named and/or counted in each census and the type of information reported has varied over time.
Visit the Pollak Library guide to the Historical U.S. Census to learn how to access and analyze historical U.S. census records, or to request a research consultation or class instruction with our Genealogy Librarian.
A page from the first (1790) U.S. federal census. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.
Visit the Pollak Library guide to African American Family History to find information about:
Public domain photo, dated between 1863-1865, from the Library of Congress.
I can assist with helping you learn how to find genealogical sources and apply genealogical methods that apply to your research interests.
However, these are my specific areas of research and teaching expertise:
These are other areas I research and sometimes teach:
This is a snippet of video created by Digital Scholarship Librarian Colleen Robledo Greene, focusing on the life story of her grandmother Eloise De Leon (1927-2024). Eloise was born in the La Loma community of Los Angles – in one of the razed Chavez Ravine homes – to Mexican immigrant parents. Her family moved back to Chihuahua, Mexico during the "Mexican Repatriation" in 1932. Eloise returned to La Loma at age 12. This video was published on Canva and mixes together historial photos with video oral history interviews Colleen conducted with her grandmother.
This video was created by Digital Scholarship Librarian Colleen Robledo Greene on Canva profiling the Los Angeles County, California neighborhoods where here father Benjamin Robledo grew up and his memories of those locations. It mixes together audio interview files from 2014 with photos, maps, and Google Street View screenshots to create a video version of those interviews.
This multimedia, immersive, digital story provides a "boots on the ground" look at the life story of Maria (Nieto) Robledo, a Mexican immigrant who moved to California. This story is built on Google Earth Web by CSUF Digital Scholarship Librarian Colleen Robledo Greene, the great-granddaughter of Maria. Colleen first published the story in 2022, redesigned it in 2025, and is still adding to it.
This is a collection of ArcGIS StoryMaps created by CSUF Digital Scholarship Librarian Colleen Robledo Greene to chronicle the WWI U.S. Army service of her great-grandfather Patrick Flanagan. This ArcGIS StoryMaps version provides a longer form more detailed narrative than the Google Earth Pro version. Colleen first published this in 2023 and continues to update it. In Part I, the digital mapping is built using StoryMaps express maps blocks and the timeline is built using the StoryMaps timeline block. In Part II, most of the maps are built with StoryMaps express maps blocks, and the summary map at the end is built with the guided map tour block.
This is a collection of Google Earth Web stories created by CSUF Digital Scholarship Librarian Colleen Robledo Greene chronicling the WWI U.S. Army service of her great-grandfather Patrick Flanagan. This Google Earth Web version provides a more "boots on the ground" view than the ArcGIS StoryMaps version.
This interactive, multimedia, digital timeline story chronicles Private Patrick Flanagan's WWI service in the U.S. Army, from draft registration, to being drafted, then bootcamp, and shipped overseas. It was created by Flanagan's geat-grandaughter CSUF Digital Scholarship Librarian Colleen Robledo Greene in 2025 using the TimelineJS platform.
