It happened!! The release of
the 1950 census
April 1, 2022
To read about my preparations for this big event click here Are you ready for the 1950 census?
In addition to creating my list with Legacy, I also used Steve Morse’s website to try to narrow down enumeration districts. Steve Morse & Joel Weintraub Unified 1950 Census ED Finder
A
name index using Artificial Intelligence was released on the National Archives
website. But, how accurate will it
be?
That being said, I wanted to do everything I could to be ready.
The 1950 census enumerates people who were living at a certain address as of April 1, 1950. This is quite significant to both myself and my husband, Ron. Why? Because we were both born in March. If the enumeration was done correctly this will be the first time we appear on a census record.
I couldn’t wait to find us and our parents!
All the social media sites were a buzz with anticipation of this release. Amy Johnson Crow began a countdown at 11:50 pm EST, which would be 8:50 pm here on the west coast.
I tuned in and waited with everyone else.
Sure enough at EXACTLY midnight eastern time, the census went live on the National Archives (NARA) website.
OH BOY!!!!!
The very first thing I did was put in the location where I would be found, as well as the enumeration district. I crossed my fingers and hoped.
I
entered Michigan, Detroit, Wayne and enumeration district 85-2559.
PLEASE CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT
I could see that I would have 29 pages to scroll through. Not too bad and easily doable.
When
I got to page 16………………..WOW! There they
were my parents, Harry & Patricia and their baby daughter, Dianne (written
with two n’s instead of one, but that’s ok).
 |
| Census image showing me with my parents |
I repeated the process with my husband’s place of birth, San Diego, California. I already had the ED’s saved. I entered the information and began scrolling through the census images. This time there were 27 pages.
There
they were with their infant son, Ronald, on page 23 of the image set.
 |
| Census image showing Ron with his parents |
Here are the ways you can find your family.
· Use the Ancestry 1950 census
district finder
(which worked very well for me) Enter the location/address etc. and it should
give you an ED
· Use Steve Morse’s page as another way to
locate the ED
· Go to the NARA
(National Archives website) 1950 Census and read their Tips for Searching the
Census and proceed.
· Use the census images
on MyHeritage to search for the
records.
· And last that I know of
– use the Family Search website. I used this one for the first
time this morning. I’m not finding it as
easy to use right now. I need to spend
some more time learning how their system works for this census.
I hope everyone is having a good time finding their families in this latest census release.
I have so far located both sets of grandparents, my uncle and my Dad’s ex wife and my two half sisters. I have a lot more people to try and locate. Can I find them without use of a name index? I’m not sure. I’ve tried entering the names on the NARA site, but so far, have not been successful in locating the exact families.
I’d love to hear your success stories.
Happy hunting,
Michigan Girl
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