By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
What’s so exciting about the 1940 census? “There’s really nothing special about this release to make it any more exciting than the 1930 release ten years ago,” according to Stephen Morse, a developer of online tools for genealogy searches. But, he noted, “the anticipation has been building up.”
There’s one notable exception, however: Where in decades past people would line up at the doors of the National Archives in Washington, D.C. or its regional satellite offices on the morning of a census release, hoping to be the first to view the microfilms of their families’ history — something akin to an overeager parent lined up at a toy store on the morning after Thanksgiving — this census is being released digitally.
“That has never happened before, and now non-genealogists will be able to access the census, as well as genealogists,” Morse told JTNews via email.
But here’s the catch. All of the previous censuses, dating back to 1790, though transcribed on paper and later saved on microfilm, have since been indexed. “The ideal way would be to enter a person’s name and have a search done to find that person in a particular census year,” said Morse.
The 1940 census, however, has not been indexed. So on opening day, which falls this year on April 2, there won’t be an easy way to search for family members by name alone, unless the record seeker has specific address information.
Morse will visit Seattle on March 12 to explain to the Jewish Genealogical Society of Washington State how anyone with an Internet connection can sift through the haystacks of records and find the needle. Morse is the co-creator of One-Step, an online database and series of tools at www.stevemorse.org that helps users search through multiple genealogical services. He has already put together a simple questionnaire that will help to guide users to their families, assuming they already have some information about where the family members lived.
The census tracts are divided into something called Enumeration Districts. Without further information than just a person’s name, a search could become very frustrating, which is where One-Step comes in.
“He has developed some tools to help you find [people],” said Mary Kozy, the Jewish Genealogical Society’s first vice president. “If you know the street they lived on, if you know what town they lived in, then those tools will help you find the Enumeration District the census takers used. It just narrows your search tremendously.”
Ten years ago, just prior to the release of the 1930 census, Morse was contacted by a former colleague who was volunteering at the National Archives in Boston. According to Morse, this colleague was worried that as “the first line of defense when all the patrons burst into the Boston regional office on opening day, looking for their grandfathers in the census,” he’d be the one taking the heat for not having Enumeration District information readily available. Meanwhile, another archives volunteer in California, Joel Weintraub, had been creating a street list database. So Morse and Weintraub teamed up to make this data available on the Internet, and the result is the One-Step site that exists today.
“There are various tools on my website that allow you to obtain the Enumeration District corresponding to your location,” Morse said. “There is one tool that is ideal for addresses in large cities. There is another for locations in rural areas. And another for converting Enumeration Districts from 1930 to the corresponding ones in 1940. There are several other tools that are useful in certain niche situations, and then there are two more tools to help you determine which tool you should be using.”
Morse will explain how to use these tools during his talk, but he also said that this about-to-be-released census has additional information not included in earlier censuses that attempted to reflect world tensions at the time.
Some examples he noted include the respondents’ address from five years earlier, to track migration caused by the Great Depression and the dust bowls; country of birth based upon 1937 national boundaries, to reflect the fluctuating borders in Europe; and who was providing the family’s information, “so you’ll know how much faith you can have in the answers,” Morse said.
Kozy said she was excited to have an internationally renowned speaker talk about the tools he created.
“As a genealogist — and I teach a lot — I’m just thrilled to have him come and teach me how use his tool, because I’m excited to teach other people to use it,” she said.
The indexing process for this census will likely take about six months, Morse believes, and will be done by volunteers through the Mormon Church, a British company called Bright Solid, and a smaller company called Inflection that received the contract from the National Archives to publish census images. But in the meanwhile, Morse said, “The researcher no longer has to get dressed and drive down to an archive — he can do the work in his PJs and unshaven if he wishes.”