They provide us with a geographical location where our ancestors once lived. They also provide us with some count of the number of family members at the location and, in the later censuses, they provided us with names, sex, race, ages, places of birth, occupations, property value, and literacy information. There are, however, some non-population schedules that accompany the federal decennial censuses. Mortality schedules provided the federal government with another means of collecting specific vital statistical information. Mortality schedules were taken for all states at the time of each of these censuses.
Some records are missing and others that exist are incomplete.
Nevertheless, the records that do exist are important because, in most cases, they predate the keeping of death records in many of the states. Mortality records are useful in documenting death dates of family members not recorded or publicized elsewhere. Once found, that can be the pointer you need to locate obituaries, mortuary records, church death records, cemeteries, probate records and land transfer records. Additionally, the cause of death shown on a mortality schedule may provide genetic diseases. The problem with mortality schedules is that they are scattered about.