Guest blog post by U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert M. Groves
On
April 2, 2012 the Census Bureau did something unique, a once-in-a-decade action.
Throughout all other times, we focus on keeping confidential the social and
economic data that households and businesses provide us. Once every
decade we release the individual records of a 72-year-old census. This
year it was the 1940 Census.
Approaching that day, the buzz in the genealogy world was deafening; they have
been waiting 10 years to fill in their family trees, to learn new things about
their ancestors, and to expand their insight into their lives.
As the genealogist of my family, I can’t wait to look up my grandparents, aunts
and uncles, as well as my parents’ forms. The forms won’t be indexed by name
immediately, so we’ll have to link addresses of our ancestors to enumeration
districts and then browse the enumeration district looking for our relatives.
Right now, my tracking of the Groves’ family goes back to 1670 on the Isle of
Wight, off the coast of England, but it ends in 1930. The 1940 Census allows me
to see records of people I remember meeting in my youth.
While the 2010 Census only had ten questions, the 1940 Census asked over 40 for
some persons. It used sampling for the
first time in the country’s history, asking a 5 percent sample of persons more
questions than others. Instead of mailed
questionnaires and other modes of data collection, all persons were enumerated
by interviewers who visited each home, recording the attributes of each person
on a line on big sheets of forms. Genealogists will learn their ancestors' age, sex, race, and
relationship to the householder, as well as the value of the home, the highest
grade of school completed, place of birth, and citizenship, and whether he/she
was living on a farm, was married, and attending school. For persons 14 years and older, there were
additionally seven different questions on working status, current occupation
and industry, number of weeks worked, and income.
There’s a treasure trove of ancestral attributes that we’ll all soon be able to
review. Each census gives gifts to the
country twice–once, when the aggregate statistical information is released
soon after data collection, then, 72 years later, when individual forms are
released for historical and genealogical purposes.
For more information on the 1940 Census, please visit http://www.census.gov/1940census/index.html.
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