From: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/ancestry-dna-database-search-warrant
I learned a really helpful census trick when using Ancestry dot com's database, and did not record from whom I copied it. It has come in really helpful when I want to quickly find relatives of someone who I knew lived in that area. As an added bonus, you'd be surprised at the number of times that future spouses' names appear living in nearby households.
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ANCESTRY QUICK TIP
Sometimes I could not read a last name on a census record.
I found that if you put in the State, County, and Township in
the index search engine without a name, all the names of the
people in the township appear in alphabetical order.
Just scroll down to the first letter of the last name and see if
Just scroll down to the first letter of the last name and see if
you can find how to spell the person's name. Right now this
would work for the 1790, 1800, 1810, 1820, 1830, 1840, 1850,
1870, and 1920 census. And for part of the 1930 census at
Ancestry.com/