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Why can't you find your great-great grandfather in the census? Let me count the ways.

His Oregon-bound wagon train was creeping across the continental divide on the census day. He was hiding out from his sweetheart's shotgun-toting father. He lived in a lonely prairie dugout 120 miles from nowhere.

He lied about his name and age because he was a practical joker, a non-conformist, or because he was just flat-out suspicious of pencil- and paper-wielding government employees.

His name was hopelessly mangled, either by poor pronunciation, poor hearing or poor handwriting, so that Tervillingland somehow became Fliruillingled.

A careless census-taker let the page with his data blow away or fall in the creek. Or maybe his page burned in an unfortunate fire, the cheap ink faded or a government basement water pipe leaked all over it.

Considering the number of things that could go wrong, it's amazing we can find anybody in the federal census records.

Yet, most of us have had good luck in charting our ancestors' marches through the census every 10 years. Occasionally, though, some of our relatives are would-be Houdinis and have hopelessly disappeared from the federal census.

So we need to move on and look at other records that we call "census substitutes." A census substitute is any list of names that records residents in a certain place at a certain time.

Census substitutes could be lists of taxpayers, voter registrations, property owners or city directories. Or it could be other kinds of locally generated lists.

Census substitutes have limitations, though. Usually only the head of the household made the list, so we miss out on all the family details that census records after 1850 offer us. Nevertheless, tracking down these lists can help with your research.

So, how do you find census substitutes? Start by checking out two new books by William Dollarhide. The two volumes entitled "Census Substitutes & State Census Records" catalog useful ancestral lists state by state.

Need to find some Texans in your family tree? Dollarhide's book lists 10 pages of Texas tax records and where we can find them. Or, how about a 1685 list of Sussex County, Delaware, landholders? Or, a 1900 list of taxpayers in Eddy County, New Mexico?

These handy reference books not only provide clues about census substitutes, they also outline available state census records.

State census records are another great resource that genealogists should explore. Many states wanted to know more about their residents so they conducted their own census in addition to the federal census.

Mississippi, for example, was particularly ambitious. It took at least 20 state censuses in the first half of the 19th century. Dollarhide outlines where you can find these valuable state resources.

Even if your ancestor isn't AWOL from the federal census, you should still take a gander at census substitutes. Every piece of information adds to the ancestral puzzle.

Find out more about the "Census Substitutes & State Census Records" books at FamilyRootsPublishing.com.