The published online Belgian Census of Hainaut are called “Registres de Population” and the images are located at FamilySearch. Unfortunately, not every town in Hainaut was counted, but most were. FamilySearch offers so much over-whelming information that it becomes a nightmare, burdensome and time consuming to find the towns (at least to me it was) then navigate from each town to another, clicking on each town to find the population registers. I created an alphabetical page of each town published with the years that are available
In addition, to cut out the navigation fuss, I’ve created an easy visual tutorial on how to navigate through the Belgian censuses to further help you out.
Most of these Belgian census records with their indexes of the Province of Hainaut are of the 1800s, but there are some towns that were counted in the 1790s . You might find additional records such as property owners information and more listed with the towns.
Information you could find in these records:
- Names: Surname and First name
- town where they came from
- Town where they live at presently
- town where they went to/date of departure
- town of birth
- date of birth or age
- profession
- marital status
- date of death
You might notice there are dates of death for some of the individuals counted. It is strange to read the later dates of death added to the population registres, while the person is still alive at the time of counting. But apparently, that was a normal procedure. The information was later recorded and forwarded to the census takers of the original town to be added.
I hope this gives you a clearer picture of the population registres (otherwise known as census records), to help you in your research in finding your ancestors. Now onward to the alphabetical listing of the towns of Hainaut. Stop by my navigation tutorial for help finding your way.