Yes, there are published early censuses of Belgium! In Belgique, the census records are not called ‘Recensement’ but are called ‘Dénombrement’. You can find them at FamilySearch.org. As of now, they are not indexed to search through, only browsable. It’s a time consuming & nightmarish task to find and search through all the towns of the provinces of Luxembourg and Namur Wallonia to find the people, towns and years available. I have put together an alphabetical list of census towns in their Provinces to help guide you through your genealogy quest.
Province of Luxembourg
The only census of the Province of Luxembourg that is available for viewing is the 1766 Belgium census. That census has been available to browse through at FamilySearch.org for some time, but it has not yet been indexed, or provided in a way that you can easily search through. It is a nightmare to go through long endless reels of film of towns not organized but lumped together under of what was then known as ‘decanat’ regions . (hence this labor of love). This region also included dwellings in the countries of Luxembourg, France and Germany (hence the nightmare).. As with France, Belgique government, and life centered around the Catholic parishes until after the French Revolution. (Sunny Morton wrote a very easy to understand article about the historical background of record keeping in Catholic France (and Belgium)
The 1766 collection includes the Provinces of Luxembourg, Namur, Liege and some Walloon Brabant and Flanders (but not of Hainaut). For now, only the provinces of Luxembourg and Namur, with the names of villages, hamlets, estates, farmhouses, chateaux, religious houses and tiny obscure villages., are linked to their images of the provinces of today.
You will notice that I included the parish names with the villages that were associated with in 1766. As with all recorded documents, mistakes and oddities were made by the census takers. There are 2 towns with the same name in the same province but are attached to two different parishes. Villages in one province could be attached to parishes in another Province. One example is Saint Hubert in P/Luxembourg. In this village , it is recorded as under the parish of Saint Gilles which is in P/Liege. Then, towns and dwelling places were filled with splitting headache spelling errors. Town names were altered, completely changed, or combined with another town to make a new one.
. You’ll need to sign in to at FamilySearch or create a free account with them in order to view the images.
This is what you could find from the 1766 census.
- Households
- Names of men above the age of 16 years old
- occupation
- names of females over the age of 14
- names of boys under the age of 16
- names of girls under the age of 14
- number of marriages
