Prep for Browsing the 1950 US Census in Three Steps

If you haven't started prepping for the release of the 1950 US Census (scheduled for April 1, 2022), you still have time. But do plan ahead.

Browse 7.8 million pages?

When the Census documents are released on that first day, there will be no index and no transcriptions. The public will be able to click through images of every page of the population schedule, with names and details handwritten by enumerators. This genealogical gold mine will be browse-only, in other words.

Who has time to browse all 7,800,000 pages of the population schedule in search of our ancestors?

Three steps to prep for browsing

Getting ready to find ancestors in the unindexed 1950 Census is a three-step process, shown at the top. In recent months, I've posted blog entries about all three steps. Here are the links.

1. List key ancestors (post is here). This is how you set priorities for who you want to find when the Census is initially released.
2. Find each ancestor's 1950 residence (post is here). You'll need this to locate your ancestor in the correct Enumeration District.   
3. Find each ancestor's 1950 Enumeration District (post is here). Turn the address into an ED, thanks to Steve Morse and Joel Weintraub's powerful ED-finder tool.

More about the 1950 US Census

For more about the 1950 US Census, please see my summary page here.

If your genealogy group is seeking a speaker to discuss the 1950 Census release and demonstrate how to look for ancestors, please keep me in mind!

 

1950 US Census: How Do My Ancestors Compare?

 

When the 1950 U.S. Census is released on April 1, 2022, I'll have to browse for my ancestors by Enumeration District. No index, no transcriptions, just page-by-page browsing when the Census is initially made public.

After I find ancestors, I'll want to interpret their answers to Census questions in the context of the time and place.

Census number-crunching

The government has already crunched many numbers from the 1950 Census and released analyses (now online).

For instance, one of the Census questions is about 1949 income. I expect my middle-class ancestors will be above the national average of $3,100 in annual family income. The Census Bureau table at top right summarizes the number of families in each income bracket during 1949.

The Census Bureau also released reports about general population characteristics, based on analyses of 1950 Census data. 

As shown at left, the number of college graduates increased dramatically from 1940 to 1950, according to Census data.

Many in my mother's and father's generation were the first in the family to attend or graduate college, being the children of immigrants. A good number of these ancestors served during World War II and went to college on the G.I. Bill.

In my husband's family, ancestors were long-established in their communities and some represented the third generation to go to college. Being aware of these trends and each family's history will help me understand the answers I see in the 1950 Census.

Census by region

For comparison purposes, the Census Bureau also reported statistics by region. Many of my hubby's ancestors lived in the North Central region, while many of my ancestors lived in the Northeast region. As I interpret the answers of our ancestors, I'll try to compare them with their counterparts in the same region, as well as with national trends for that era. 

Read up in advance and be ready for the 1950 U.S. Census release in 2022.

For more about the 1950 US Census release in 2022, see my summary page here.

Surprise: Great-Grandpa Had a First Wife!

Who knew? My great-grandfather, Meyer Elias Mahler (1855?-1910) was married and divorced before he married my great-grandmother, Tillie Rose Jacobs (185x?-1952). I was really surprised to learn about the first marriage when my kind gen friend Lara Diamond discovered this 1877 divorce document in the unindexed but browsable Riga records on Family Search.

The records are in Russian and Hebrew, and not yet transcribed. In the red rectangle above is my great-grandfather's name in Russian handwriting: Meer Eliyash, son of Dovid Akiva Mahler. The record indicates he was 21 at the time of the divorce, and his first wife Gita was 26. They were granted a divorce on the grounds of quarreling.

I'm not the only descendant who never heard this story. It only whetted my appetite to learn more about this branch of my family tree.

Siauliai or Sabile?

Meyer's town is shown as "Shavlin" on the Hebrew side of the document and "Shavel" on the Russian side, Lara told me. Using the JewishGen.org "Town Finder" database, I found two possibilities. One is Sabile, Latvia and the other is Siauliai, Lithuania. NOTE: A reader suggested possibly Siaulenai, Lithuania.

Looking through the JewishGen.org records for these two towns, I found entries for a David Mahler (or a surname variation like Meller) in both towns. The various entries didn't mention Meyer, only David, but there may be additional names and details on the documents that aren't listed in the extracts. I need both names on one document to determine whether any of these entries is my family and to confirm a hometown.

This research will focus on Lithuania and Latvia, so naturally I'm studying Lara Diamond's strategies for finding genealogical records in Eastern Europe.

In search of Meyer, David, Hinde, and more

I'll be on the lookout for Meyer's mother (Hinde Luria) on a birth record or on a document describing her marriage to David Akiva Mahler. This would be a real long-shot, but it's a possibility.

Meanwhile, I'm also going to browse the unindexed Riga records in search of entries that mention Meyer and/or his second wife and/or his two Latvian-born children. I have a rough idea of which years to search. Although Hebrew and Russian are definitely not my strength, I'm lucky enough to have some help!

My good friend "Is" enlarged the Russian handwriting on Meyer's divorce document and suggested hints for spotting names on these Riga documents. Also, I'm consulting the Family Search Russian genealogical word list as I search. And, given that I could be looking at Lithuanian records on Family Search, I'm reading the LitvakSIG guide to Family History Library films. 

Another important item on my to-do list is to find Meyer Elias Mahler on a ship manifest with an arrival in New York City on or around May 27, 1885. That's the date and port listed on his naturalization index and paperwork, but no ship is named. I've previously browsed passenger manifests for that date and the days before and after, with no success. Time for another look with fresh eyes.

Meyer and family won't be found in a day, but they're on my research list now, with sources to examine. A good start.

Negatives are time capsule of 1919 fashion

My late father-in-law Edgar James Wood (1903-1986) was a photo buff. After receiving a camera for his 14th birthday, he took it on family road trips with his father, James Edgar Wood (1871-1939) and his mother, Mary Slatter Wood (1869-1925). 

Ed saved hundreds of negatives (and a few prints) from 1917 through the 1940s, marking dates on the negatives and notes on the envelopes. I used the "scan, invert, enhance" process to turn the old negatives into clearer positives.

Visit to the Baker family in Toledo, Ohio

Thanks to Ed's notation that these negatives are of the Baker family of Toledo, I can identify the two young ladies shown at left as Dorothy L. Baker (1897-1981) and Edith E. Baker (1901-1989). I don't which young lady is which, unfortunately. The photographer didn't write an exact date on the negatives, but others in the envelope were taken in 1919.

These two ladies were Ed's first cousins, and he was in touch with them for the next 50 years. How fashionable they were, fur collar, hats, and all!

Fashion of the time

I did an online search for "ladies coat fashion 1919" and found similar outfits for that year. As a result, I do think the negatives were from late that year or perhaps the following year.

At right is Mary Slatter Wood, Ed's mother, in the warm coat and hat she wore during that same trip. 

Her husband James drove the family from their home in Cleveland, Ohio to Toledo, Ohio, stopping along the way to picnic and to fix flat tires. Mary and everyone else in the car were smart to bundle up against the elements, because their 1917 Ford probably had no built-in heater!

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"Fashion" is this week's #52Ancestors prompt from Amy Johnson Crow.

Prepping for 1950 US Census: Address Details Matter!

As I prep for the release of the 1950 U.S. Census on April 1, 2022, I'm listing  ancestors and researching their 1950 addresses. This helps me find the correct ED (Enumeration District) for browsing Census images before indexing and transcription are completed.

A fair number of ancestors in my tree and hubby's tree are listed in directories. This makes it easy to take the street address and look up the enumeration district (ED) using Steve Morse & Joel Weintraub's fantastic "Unified Census ED Finder" tool. 

North, south, east, or west?

When I was looking for the ED of one of my husband's Larimer ancestors, I used the drop-down menus on the ED Finder tool to specify state (Indiana), county (Elkhart), and and town (Goshen). See image at bottom of post.

Next, I entered the exact number of the residence, which is 205 North 8th Street.

However, the street name on the drop-down menu is shown only as "8th" with no provision for north or south. See the green oval on the image below.

Without specifying north or south, the finder gives me 6 possible EDs (see image at bottom). Yikes, too many!

I mapped both 205 S. 8th (not where the ancestor lived) and 205 N. 8th (star shows correct location). As image at top shows, these two addresses are nowhere near each other and would not be in the same ED! I need to narrow things down.

Use map and cross streets 

The ED Finder can get me much closer to the actual street address. It instructs me to click to look at the map (see purple arrow pointing to "Google map" on image below). 

The next step is to locate a cross street and/or a back street. Those are boundaries for enumerators, and will reduce the number of EDs in which an address might be located. 

Tracing 205 N. 8th, I saw a prominent back street on the same block: Crescent. When I entered that into the ED Finder tool, only a single ED showed up: 20-69.

Paying attention to this address detail will spare me a lot of unnecessary browsing when the Census is made public next year.

Try the Unified Census ED Finder and see how easy it is to locate your ancestor's Enumeration District.

For more posts about prepping for the 1950 Census, please see my summary page.