RLP 191: Preparing for the 1950 U.S. Census Release

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 191 preparing for the 1950 us census release. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin they also co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases.

Nicole (41s):
Let’s go. Hello everybody. Welcome to Research Like a Pro, how are you, Diana?

Diana (48s):
I am good. Nicole, how are you doing today?

Nicole (51s):
I’m great. So what have you been reading lately?

Diana (54s):
I have a new book by Paul Heinegg and it is titled a List of Free African Americans in the American Revolution. And it’s for the states of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, and Delaware, such an interesting book. And Paul Heinegg has done so much work on locating free African-Americans and publishing information about them in his books. And so what you get at the end as an index, and it’s organized by surname and then by first name and then the specific page number. So what I love about those types of indexes is if the surname is billed at different ways, you can see all of the references.

Diana (1m 38s):
So for instance, there is a surname in here, Brandom, B R AN D O M, and then a Brandon with an N at the end, and then Brandum, B R A N D U M. And then Brannum B R A N N U M. So you would probably guess those are all the members of a family, right? And it’s so great in an index like this, because you can see all of those right there together, and then turn to all the different references and page numbers for those possible or probable family members. So in the book, once you turn to an individual to their page, then you get to see exactly the information. For instance, I’ll just read a little bit of this one.

Diana (2m 20s):
This is for Gibson Harris. He was listed in the 1778 Granville county militia returns for captain Abraham Potter’s company. So you get an abstract and then you get the specific reference, you know, it’s all completely sourced. So you know, that’s from the state records of North Carolina. And it also, if he has been found in any other records, that’s included. And so he’s in the state records of North Carolina and also in the 1810 census as a free African-American as the head of household. So isn’t that awesome.

Nicole (2m 53s):
That’s really cool. So that sounds like a great resource. And that’s from genealogical publishing?

Diana (2m 58s):
That’s Genealogical Publishing, and they have several other books by Paul Heinegg as well. This one just specifically is for those free African-Americans that were in the American revolution. Also on the title page, it says followed by the French and Indian wars and colonial Militias. So, you know, I think one of the things that we don’t realize if we haven’t studied it is that there were many free African Americans who fought in these wars or military skirmishes, some of them were. And so those are just another place to search for your family, those types of records. And it’s great to have a published source that you can go to by.

Nicole (3m 40s):
That’s great. Thanks for sharing while we’re in the middle of our Research Like a Pro with DNA study group right now. So if you’re interested in joining the next one, we’ll be starting that in September, and it will be Research Like a Pro study group, without DNA, and registration for that will begin this summer. If you want to be a peer group leader for that, just apply on our website. And we’d love to have you.

Diana (4m 6s):
We are talking today all about the 1950 census, and that is going to be released very, very soon. This podcast comes out in the beginning of March and we will be getting the 1950 census in April. So let’s just talk a little bit about how the census even came to be. And I think everyone listening probably is aware that we have a United States census since 1790. And the reason we do is because the constitution of the United States requires a census every 10 years to find out about the citizens. And it really depends on the year what the census will have for the information.

Diana (4m 48s):
And so it really depends on history and what the government wanted to find out. So the 1950 census is no different. It’s very similar to the 1940 census form, and it has three main sections. It has a section for the head of household, a section for all persons and persons, 14 years of age and over. And one of the things that this has carried over from the 1940 census is sample lines. And so in 1940, we see that where you have a person on a sample line, they have extra questions answered at the bottom of the form.

Diana (5m 28s):
And in 1950, we have that also there are six sample lines and they’re scattered throughout the page. I think the hope was that at least one person in the family would answer the additional questions. Now, if you have maybe just a couple it’s possible that you won’t be able to have that you want to have them answering any of the special questions. So it’s just going to be interesting to see who ends up answering those.

Nicole (5m 57s):
That’s interesting. Well, let’s talk about a breakdown of the different categories found in the 1950 census. So the head of household, and this is where you’ll discover if family members lived on a farm or ranch of three acres or more, and we’ll also get a specific house or apartment number. And then for the all persons category, you’ll see the names of household members. And those were to be listed in a specific order and relationships are noted. So that’s always helpful for our genealogy. Then the race sex age on last birthday, marital status and birth place were also noted.

Nicole (6m 45s):
Then you have naturalization information which was answered with only a yes, no, or AP, which stands for American Patriot in case the person was born abroad. Although this seems odd, consider all the babies born abroad during and after World War II, who by 1950 would have been children listed on the 1950 census. For the last category persons of 14 years of age and over, this section highlights how an individual spent their time in the previous week working keeping house, et cetera. So this is where the occupation and industry were filled in.

Diana (7m 26s):
I know that was such an interesting section. It seemed kind of nosy to me, you know, what were you doing all of last week? So it’s going to be really fun to see what people put in that and see how specific they are. The interesting thing about this form is do you have the instructions to the enumerator right there at the top. So they tell them exactly how to list the names of the people in the household, you know, head of household first and then his wife, and then the unmarried sons and daughters, then the married sons and daughters and their families, other relatives, and then others present. So, you know, sometimes in those earlier censuses, we don’t have the instructions. Well, most of the time we don’t have the instructions to the enumerator on the form and we have to go research that and find those.

Diana (8m 8s):
So it’s nice that in this case we have the instructions right there. Yeah. So let’s talk about those sample line questions. So the way the sample line questions work is on the form and in the blog posts that we’ll link to, we have a link to the actual form. The National Archives has made the form available so we can look at it right now, but what they’ve done is scattered those sample lines. So lines for 9, 14, 19, 24, and 29 are the sample lines. The questions for the sample individuals are just a little bit more detailed. You get a find out if they lived in the same house, farm or county a year ago.

Diana (8m 50s):
And then if no, the residents of the previous year was listed. So that is always nice information. If someone had recently moved, find out where they were before, and then you get to find out about their parents’ country of birth, the individual’s level of education, and whether they attended school since February 1st, and then if they are 14 years of age or over, we get more questions about employment and salary. And if the person was male, then they ask about military service, which I think is kind of funny because we had a lot of females that served in the military in World War II. So guess they just didn’t care about that. I don’t know.

Diana (9m 32s):
And then finally we have marital status and number of children born for a female. So we’re going to hope that we have some people in those sample questions because that’s great information.

Nicole (9m 42s):
That is great information. And it will be interesting to see who moved in 1949. The mobility of the American family probably was starting to change a little bit about this time period, as people had more vehicles and things, and it was easier to move around more.

Diana (10m 2s):
Yeah. And you also had a lot of men who were come home from World War II, who had the GI bill and were attending college maybe for the first time in their families. You know, someone was going to college. I know for my dad, he was the first person in his family to attend college on the GI bill. And I think you will see some more mobility with that, you know, going to a college and then getting a job, moving away from the family farm, going and doing something different. And it would be right in that time period. So it’ll be interesting.

Nicole (10m 35s):
Great. Well, let’s talk now about how we can access the 1950 census. So the National Archives is going to release the census images in April of this year, and we’ll be able to download specific sections of the census from the national archives website. And it will be organized by state county and enumeration district. And then of course, the other websites that publish the census images such as family search and ancestry will then publish those images and begin name, indexing them and family search. We’ll start with a computer-generated index that volunteers can verify and correct before it’s published on family search.

Nicole (11m 22s):
So that’s kind of neat. If you’re interested in helping with this big job, then you can go to FamilySearch.org and volunteer. Since an every name index won’t be available right away, we’ll need to search by enumeration district if we’re looking for a particular person in our family. So you have probably seen that enumeration district or ed noted at the top of the census forum starting in 1880 and going forward. And the census bureau divided counties by enumeration district and a single census taker was supposed to canvas that district within the census period. So it was just kind of another way of dividing up areas,

Diana (11m 60s):
Right? So I wanted to just explore this whole concept of searching by enumeration district and seeing how that works. So I went to my grandparents’ household in 1940. They lived in Cassia county, Idaho in the small town of Declo. And on that 1940 form, the enumeration district number is 16-20. And it’s up in the top right corner. And it shows my grandparents, ER and Florence Kelsey there in Declo. And they had lived there since 1918 on my grandfather homesteaded the land, I believe in 1915, they got married in 1917 and lived right there, all their lives.

Diana (12m 44s):
So in this census in 1940 five of their six children are at home, including my mother who was the baby of the family. But when World War II broke out, all three of the sons went to fight and they were all on the Pacific front and all three survived the war. And in 1950, they’ll all be in separate households. So we’re going to see such a change from 1940 to 1950. I mean, we do that with every 10 years of a census, but I think this was really a remarkable time having gone through the war to see what will happen with these families. And even though I grew up in the area, I knew my grandparents, I knew all my aunts and uncles.

Diana (13m 25s):
Well, I’m still just really curious to see in 1950, for one thing, what everybody was doing the week before, you know, I’m very curious. I know my grandmother was keeping house and my grandfather was farming, you know, over those uncles doing and those aunts, it’ll be fun. There is a little bit of difference when you compare the 1940 census. So you can go look up one of your family members in 1940 census household, and then compare that to the 1950 form that the national archives has made available. And you’ll see that it is different. They have changed questions that changed things just a little bit as they always do. So.

Nicole (14m 1s):
So if you want to get ready and find the enumeration district that your family lived in, there’s a great tool that we can use at stevemorse.org. This website helps you easily search and look at map images of the 1950 enumeration districts. And these maps are actually hosted on the National Archives website, but using the stevemorse.org website makes it easier to find these maps. For your example, Diana, we can look at the location of the Kelsey home that we know, and then we can enter the search terms into the Steve Morse website. So Idaho and Cassia county, the website returns a link to view the maps over the National Archives website and takes us directly over there.

Nicole (14m 44s):
So why don’t you talk us through finding the 1950 enumeration district for the Kelsey’s?

Diana (14m 51s):
When I was in Cassia county and Idaho, then the Steve Morse website came up with a few different links. So you have the links directly to NARA, National Archives, viewer or direct links to JPEGs, so images on the server. So the advantages of going straight to the viewer are it’s faster to display, but lower resolution, and then advantages/disadvantages of direct links to the JPEGs, you get a higher resolution, but it takes a little bit longer. So you just get to decide, do you want to look at it fast, lower resolution, or do you want a nice high resolution? What I noticed was Cassia county has several different maps that I would have to look at.

Diana (15m 37s):
And there’s one for enumeration district 16-6 to 14, 16-36 to 37 or 16-1 to 37. So, you know, those numbers just don’t make a lot of sense to me. And so you actually have to go click on the map and then see if you can discover where your family would be. Now. I hypothesize that my grandparents would not be in the Burley enumeration districts because Burley is a larger town. And that’s where I grew up. And I figured Declo, which is eight miles away would be in a different district. So I started looking at the, just the greater Cassia county maps. And what I found was that my grandparents were actually in the same enumeration district in 1950 as they were in 1940, that 16-20.

Diana (16m 26s):
Now that’s probably because of the way the districts were drawn. This was a rural area. There was not a lot of growth from year to year. If you are in an area that had a lot of growth, probably they’re going to be a lot more districts added and it will be different. And so you might have the scenario I did where it’s the same, or it might be much different. So what you’ll have to do is start taking a look at those maps. And I opened each one and I could see for sure, early was not the right one. Then I finally found the one that was correct. And I knew it was correct because I knew the area I grew up in the area visiting my grandparents every week.

Diana (17m 8s):
And I could see exactly where their house was. It was great, the maps, so points of interest. I saw the Snake River, the highway, the railroad, the community of Springdale. It was just fun to see, you know, the community I knew. And I could see clearly the enumeration district that they would be in. So that was really fun. Now, when the 1950 census is released, then I will just go to the National Archives. I’ll go to 16-20, and then I will just search by page. I don’t know how many pages that will include yet because it has not been released yet, but for 1940, there were 32 pages. And so, you know, you might think, oh, 32 pages to look through, but that’s not that big of a deal.

Diana (17m 50s):
We searched the census page by page all the time when we’re looking for a family that we just cannot find through the index. So, you know, you might have 30 pages, maybe a 40, 50, I don’t know, maybe just 20, but then you can have the fun of reading through those pages and you’ll see your ancestors neighborhood recreated before your eyes. You’ll get to see what people were doing and how they spent their last week. It’s going to be an adventure.

Nicole (18m 17s):
Well, that doesn’t sound too hard. And I think we can probably hypothesize where most of our relatives were living in 1950. It is just based on what we already know. So how can we prepare to do this? You’re going to need to really narrow down the location for each family or individual that you want to find. So if you don’t know an exact location, the first step will be to identify what people you want to find on the 1950 census. This could include yourself, your siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and extended family. Maybe you could make a list in a table or a spreadsheet, and then add information about each one, such as there are no location in 1940 and a possible location in 1950, if you have a guest for that, you could also know their occupation, marital status, anything that might help you.

Nicole (19m 7s):
And then step two is to ask your family members to help you figure out the answers to your questions, and then use photographs, letters, diaries, scrapbooks, and so forth to help you make timelines for people and determine where they were living. And then after you’ve tapped into those at-home sources and family members, you can do some research. So now that you have a little timeline of that family use available records to pin them down to an exact location, city directories, phone books, newspapers of actuaries, school records, vital records, social security applications, world war II, draft registrations, and even naturalization records all have addresses or locations listed.

Nicole (19m 51s):
So these can really help you to nail down exactly where they lived in 1950.

Diana (19m 57s):
Right? It’s fun to think about who we can find. And as you were talking, I was thinking that this was going to be great for our DNA research as well, because we’re always trying to find descendants and put together family trees for our ancestors. And so this will give us another resource for finding more descendants. It’s going to be great. Well, I think that this is going to be such a fun year, having the 1950 census to work with. And in our show notes, we’re going to have some additional resources for you. So there’s a great blog post on the Steve morris.org website, getting ready for the 1950 census, the searching with them without a name index.

Diana (20m 37s):
And so you’ll get additional information and screenshots about the 1950 census. And of course you’ll want to also check out while you’re at Steve morris.org, the one-step web pages website, because not only is there help for the 19 50 cents was, but there are so many tools for every census version. And a lot of immigration helps there as well. And then Joel Weintraub, who also has done a lot of work on the 1950 census with Steve Morse has a set of videos that you can access on his YouTube channel JDW Talks, and you like to watch videos and just really go in-depth.

Diana (21m 18s):
That’s another great resource. So we hope you all have fun getting ready for the release of the 1950 census. It’ll be fun to see everybody’s stories and experiences as we start finding our family.

Nicole (21m 31s):
Yes. And it will be fun to help with the indexing effort. I remember helping out with the Family Search indexing volunteer program when the 1940 census was released, and it was a very fun, collaborative, exciting project to work on. It was just looking at the Family Search blog post about the 1950 census release. And it says that there were about 132 million people and enumerated in 1940, but by 1950, the population was a little over 150 million. So it’ll take longer

Diana (22m 3s):
That they have, they are using this computer-generated index to do the bulk of it. And then it will be humans. Those of us who are volunteering to verify things. So it’s going to be exciting to see that’s going to really improve how fast we can have those name indexes available. Yeah.

Nicole (22m 23s):
For some perspective on that in 2012, when Family Search did the 1940 census, their goal was to finish it in six months, but they actually beat the goal by a couple of months and finished in just four months, except for they didn’t finish Puerto Rico by that time. But they had over 163,000 volunteers. And a lot of people from genealogical organizations contributing their time and efforts. So that’s really neat that it only took four months to get almost everything done.

Diana (22m 51s):
Yeah. It’s going to be fun. It’s kind of fun to work on a big project like that too. We hope everybody listening well, set aside some time in April to do some indexing,

Nicole (23m 2s):
Right. And as you know, I’m very interested in the computer indexing and I’ve kind of been following that through the years. So it will be fascinating just to see what the computer is able to read from the handwriting of the census records and what is required for a human to actually figure out. Because a lot of the time you just have to see it and know a name, to be able to figure it out. And a computer can’t always recognize random names that are unusual, like Permilia.

Diana (23m 35s):
Yeah. It’ll be fun. I was part of a family search zoom call, where they previewed the technology and what the indexing will look like. And it was pretty exciting. It’s going to be different than what we’re used to and it’s going to be so much easier to use. And the technology quite honestly, is kind of astounding. So I’m excited to see it all come into play because we thought a mock up of it. And so I’m excited to see what it’s like when we’re really working on it. Yeah.

Nicole (24m 7s):
I know that Family Search has been really working hard on it. And at Brigham Young University too, they’ve been working on that machine learning indexing for computer, and they have that reverse indexing that you can do where you go and type in a last name. And then the computer finds instances of that last name in historical records and brings them all up, zoomed in on that name. And then you have to tell the computer, if it gets it wrong, it’s kind of funny. It’s really fun for like kids or teenagers, just to kind of practice with handwriting. But it’s interesting how the computer will not index the name incorrectly again, after you tell it that this certain handwriting is wrong, it remembers that and it learns.

Nicole (24m 48s):
Yep.

Diana (24m 49s):
That’s wonderful. And a little frightening too.

Nicole (24m 54s):
I’ll put a link to the reverse indexing website from Brigham Young University in the show notes. And there’s also actually a roots tech video by our friend Joe Price about reverse indexing. And so I’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. If anyone wants to learn more about it,

Diana (25m 8s):
Well, that sounds great. Oh, we hope everybody enjoyed this episode and that you’re all excited to go check out 1950 census indexing. So many things we can do right now to get ready for the release.

Nicole (25m 20s):
All right. We’ll talk to you guys again next week. Bye.

Diana (25m 23s):
All right, bye bye.

Nicole (25m 24s):
Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our books, Research Like a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com/services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday, subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket.com/newsletter. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.