To be ready when the 1950 Census is released on April 1, 2022 (woo hoo!), I'm reading background information and thinking about what ancestors' responses could reveal about family history.
If you have ancestors enumerated in the 1950 Census, do check out the summary report(s) for the state(s) where they lived in 1950. The reports are digitized and available at HathiTrust. The excerpt above is from the introduction to the results summary for New York State, where so many of my ancestors lived at the time.
Separated, divorced, widowed?
"Separated" was a new category for marital status in the 1950 US Census. That's a plus for genealogical researchers, if our ancestors answered truthfully.
In earlier years, a few of my ancestors said they were "widowed" rather than admit to being separated or divorced. Maybe in 1950, they answered "separated" because it was a little less of a stigma than "divorced" was at the time?
As shown in the excerpt at top, the Census Bureau noted that this new "separated" category may have lowered the number of people recorded as "divorced."
But read further, and see how the Census Bureau dealt with situations in which no marital status was recorded by the enumerator.
"Estimated" marital status
The Census Bureau "estimated" marital status in situations where the enumerator, for whatever reason, didn't record an individual's marital status.
The "estimate" was made on the basis of age and presence of spouse or children in the household.
So some individuals who were recorded as "single" under 1940 US Census rules might be recorded in 1950 as "married, spouse absent" or "widowed." Interesting clues.
Who's telling the truth?
What about my great aunt Nellie Block, who previously told enumerators she was single? In the US and NY Census documents I've checked, Nellie lived alone or was a boarder in someone else's apartment. She never had any spouse or children in the household with her, so far as I could see. She consistently said she was single.
Yet when Nellie died late in 1950, she was supposedly widowed, according to her brother, the informant for her death cert. Who was telling the truth, Nellie or her brother? Looking forward to seeing how her marital status was recorded in the 1950 Census.
In 1940, my grandmother, mother of four, listed herself as widowed, however, she and her husband were separated. He lived a few blocks away in the same town. It will be interesting to see if she changed what she called herself.
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