Genealogy Jottings

This month’s release of the 1940 U.S. census has genealogists excited to look at this new source of information. Unfortunately, it comes without an index. What was the population of the U.S. in 1940? Over 132 million? That means a lot of names to look through to find a family.

I am helping the effort to create an index by volunteering with the LDS church/National Archives project to build one. I download a census page, read it and enter the data into a template, and then submit my work. Each page takes 30-60 minutes, depending on how hard it is to read the census taker’s handwriting. The census is all in longhand, written with fountain pens. I have chosen to work on pages from Minnesota because my current research focuses on my Minnesota roots. Some of my husband’s family lived in Minnesota, too.

Like many others, though, I have not wanted to wait for an index to look at these records. A couple of tools can help find a family in the absence of an index. If one knows that a family did not move between 1930 and 1940, a converter tool can use the 1930 Enumeration District to suggest possible Districts to search on the 1940 census. Or if one knows the 1940 street address of a family in an urban area, one can use Google maps to identify the major cross streets. Another tool will then provide the Enumeration District for that area. Once you have an Enumeration District, you must do an every name search, but at most it will be a few hundred names.

For my Dad’s family, I knew the ED converter would not work, because they moved from Wyoming to Loveland, Colorado between the census years. Loveland is one of the towns included in the cross street tool so I used it to find Dad’s family pretty easily. Surprisingly, this record contains a huge mistake. It says their residence in 1935 was Wheatland, Nebraska rather than Wheatland, Wyoming. Probably the Colorado census taker was unfamiliar with surrounding states and assumed that since some family members had been born in Nebraska, Wheatland  is located there.

I had less success with my mother’s family. I know their 1940 address in Hibbing, Minnesota so I tried the cross street tool first. No luck. Hibbing is not on the list of towns available with this tool. Next I tried the Enumeration District converter, because I know the family lived in the same house in 1930. Instead of giving me one ED to search, the tool returned seven EDs. I am not willing to slog through that many names to look for them when I do not think any new information will be revealed to me. I already have the City Directory for Hibbing for those years to use as a census substitute, so I will wait for a Minnesota index.

Hey, I am working on it!