Ancestry.com is offering access to its US Federal Census collection, 1790-1940, for free until September 3rd.

Are you still missing some of your relatives’ census records? This is a great opportunity to search for them again.

Thanks to Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings, we can also see a PDF from Ancestry called “Follow your family using census records“. It contains details about what is in each census, including a chart showing the main questions that were asked year by year, as well as some instructions for how to trace your family once you’ve located them in the most recent census.

Part of this celebration includes their release of the Ancestry.com Time Machine, which is supposed to create a personal video of your life if you lived 72 years ago. (Unfortunately, after answering all of the questions, it gets stuck on the “loading” screen for me. If it works for you, visit this blog and leave a message about what it produced.)