The Party Continues – the 1950 Census will drop April 1st!

The Party Continues – the 1950 Census will drop April 1st!

by | Mar 15, 2022 | Census records

Party hearty to the 1950 census beat!

My last post discussed making a list to prep for the 1950 census release which should be on everyone’s radar. If you are Generation X, your parents and their siblings are on this record as well as your grandparents and great grandparents and their siblings!  So how will I prepare? Here’s my list:

Step 1 – Look at the 1940 census

Look at all my ancestors that were on the 1940 census that I want to follow into 1950. Make a list of their names and other important information. I am looking to compare their occupations, addresses and see who was living at the residence and their relationship to the head of household, their education, and their birthplaces.

Step 2 – Enumeration districts

Take my list in step one and look up the enumeration district for the 1940 census. The enumeration district is the area that a census taker was responsible for at the time they took the census. My assumption will be that my relatives stayed in the same place from 1940 to 1950. Because the 1950 census will not be searchable by the subject’s name, I will need to know my ancestors’ enumeration district in order to research them. Then I would go to https://stevemorse.org/census/unified.html to find a map of the district for a specific census year.

Step 3 – Blank forms

Print out a few blank 1950 census forms from https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/1950_population_questionnaire.pdf. Once I find my ancestors in an enumeration district, I’m going to write down their information on the form. I know that all the genealogy websites will move slower than molasses because everyone will be researching, therefore I will want to write down my info to compare offline. I will want to look for other relatives living close by, either in the same city or in the same county. I’m also going to look at their neighbors and other people that might be connected to my family. 

Step 4 – Get ready!

Set an alarm for April 1st! You know, every genealogist all over the world will be up at 12:01am ready to research. A pot of coffee will be on tap because we will be pulling an all-nighter. Oh, and several of us will take that day off so we can spend HOURS trying to get the info we want for ourselves and our clients.  We will most likely crash the internet! Be patient though, I guarantee we will probably be in bed by 10pm since we were up all night…so that might be your best time to research. 

If this is all overwhelming, it’s ok. You can always hire a genealogist to help you through it or do it for you. *wink, wink. https://familymattersgenealogy.com/?page_id=7

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We’re Gonna Party Like It’s…1950?!?!

We’re Gonna Party Like It’s…1950?!?!

by | Mar 2, 2022 | Census records

Preparing for the release of the 1950 census records

I’m excited for 1950 because of the census! Some people get excited when a new cell phone drops but genealogists get excited when new records become available! Imagine the family historians cutting a rug when the National Archives drops the 1950 census on April 1st? It will be similar to New Year’s Eve!  This census is so important to genealogists for several reasons:

  • This is the census that most of our parents show up on for the first time. 
  • We continue to follow the migration of our relatives from the South to the North and out to the West. 
  • Alaska and Hawaii did not become states until 1959; however, they were included in census records as well as other U.S. territories.
  • Military personnel living on their installations and college students living at their college were enumerated at their respective locations.

What you need to know

Here are some things that you need to be aware of with this census:

  • Enumerators microfilmed only the front side of the 1950 census. Unfortunately, the originals were destroyed. Bah humbug!
  • There were several versions of the 1950 Census. The P1 (Basic Census form) was what the enumerators (census takers) used when they went door-to-door; however, there were 17 other forms that enumerators used. Wow!
  • The 1950 census had fewer lines (30 lines) compared to the 1940 census (40 lines). They included more room for enumerators to take notes or give explanations about information on the record. 
  • Name searching will be available through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) that will decipher the handwritten records. If you find a mistake in the transcription, submit a correction to help perfect the indexing.
  • The relationship status updated compared to the 1940 census. They removed “S” for single and added “N” for “never married.”
  • Enumerators asked additional questions based on previously answered questions or their position on the census.

Personally, I’m going to make a list to prep for the 1950 census release.  How am I going to do that you ask? That’s a post for another day. Happy Searching!

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