Saturday, April 2, 2022

AT LAST ~ THE RELEASE OF THE 1950 U.S. FEDERAL CENSUS

 

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

Copyright ©  2010-2022   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

2 comments:

  1. You were very lucky with finding yourself on a Detroit census page. This was also the first census I would appear in, having been born in 1948. However, I only knew the street my parents lived on in 1950 and not the address as we only lived there about 2 years. I feared this would be a futile effort when I learned how many ED's there were for the street Drexel besides there being a Drexel North and Drexel South. What to do? Then I had an idea - I knew my parents were living in an upper level of a 2 family home and I remembered the name of the people who owned the home and lived on the first floor. I went to Ancestry and searched for that couple and found their marriage license where the bride was listed as living on Drexel in 1947!! Taking a chance I was able to search for that address and after going through about 15 pages there were my parents and myself. Age 1 1/2. I was excited. These are fun records to search. Good luck to you with your continuing research!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cheryl - GREAT that you found yourself. We are a very persistent bunch as genealogists and we often figure out a way to find what we need. Good job! Happy hunting. :)

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I look forward to reading your comments. If you have any connection to the people mentioned in this blog, please let me know. I write about mine and my husband's ancestors and would welcome new information or meeting a new cousin or two. Thanks for visiting and come back soon.