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"Smiling villages and populous cities spring up, and in a few years the comfort, convenience and even luxury of civilization are enjoyed — all the result of wealth that has been dug from the soil."

Wealth from the soil? The government official who penned those words more than 120 years ago in his report on the 1880 federal census wasn't ruminating about "Texas tea" as Jed Clampett would say.

He was writing about a more quaint wealth-making enterprise — the family farm. When the government unleashed thousands of census-takers across the land during the 19th century, they not only probed the populace for vital details about their families, they also questioned the farmers about their farming habits.

The government started collecting agricultural stats from individual farmers in 1840. And, typically, with each passing census year the number of questions expanded. By 1880, 4 million American farmers paused from their plowing to answer 75 questions about their farming operations.

Each year the definition of what constituted a farm changed slightly. The 1880 instructions noted that "a farm is what is leased or owned by one man and cultivated under his care."

Census-takers were instructed to ignore cabbage and potato patches and family gardens, focusing instead on farms of 3 acres or more.

Agricultural schedules cataloged crop farmers as well as livestock farmers.

The farmers in the Ranchos de Atrisco area of Bernalillo County, for example, were sheep farmers. In 1880, Salvador Baca had 6,500 sheep valued at $6,000. The weight of the fleeces shorn that spring totaled 10,000 pounds. During the previous year he lost 1,000 sheep due to inclement weather.

Of his 130 acres, 10 were planted in corn and 20 in wheat. He had 5 horses and 12 mules, and he had paid wages of $200 for farm laborers.

Obviously, if you can spot your farming ancestor on an agricultural schedule, you'll gain intriguing insight into the family farming fortunes.

The problem is many of the agricultural schedules no longer exist and those that do are scattered all over the place.

The National Archives has some. Check a list of agricultural schedules on microfilm.

The Family History Library also has some on microfilm as does the Center for Research Libraries .

Many of the schedules are housed at state archives and historical societies. Check online catalogs. Idaho, for example, has an index of farmers enumerated on the agricultural schedules in 1870 and 1880.

Do a simple Google search for a specific year and state. Many indexes of agricultural schedules are online. Look for both "agricultural schedule" and "non-population schedule."

As with all census records, approach the data with some skepticism. Grandma may have fibbed about her age, and Granddad may have fibbed about the vastness of his farming empire.

The 1880 report cautioned that "a person is subject to a strong temptation, consciously or unconsciously, to exaggerate the facts of production, not to speak of the simple unfitness of most men, even most men of intelligence, to make statistical estimates or computations."