My thoughts on the 1940 Census

[Cormac]

Even though I have found one relative on the 1940 census on my own and that I now have 11 hints at Ancestry.com, I am underwhelmed and not impressed with the information contained on the 1940. One question that I feel that should have been asked was the number of children and the number of children living. That question has been asked many times in the past. Now that I have seen the 1940 census, all I can say is "Oh wow!"

[donworth]

Re: My thoughts on the 1940 Census

I do like the fact that it asks where someone was living in 1935. Very useful. Sorry to see parents' birthplace was moved to a random sampling and not everyone.

I have been indexing the census - a lot of fun! It was neat to see Ancestry announcing the availability of the Nevada index after I worked on it.

[steveoc]

Re: My thoughts on the 1940 Census

I found "highest grade of school completed" to be very interesting and useful.

[Cormac]

Re: My thoughts on the 1940 Census

Not to say that there isn't useful information on there, there is. But most of the employment section is something that only an economist would love and IMHO, an joke. IMO, there are multiple columns that for reasons, only known to the designers and/or the enumerators, that are empty. I am still underwhelmed by the dearth of information.

[kmgenealogy]

Re: My thoughts on the 1940 Census

I found the information interesting, but not overwhelmingly so. Found my grandmother in the Oregon census as a widow, as my grandfather died in 1939. She was on one of the supplemental lines. I didn't learn anything new.

FYI: Portland, Multnomah Co., Oregon changed many street names/designations in 1931. So, if you have a 1930 street address that you can't find in the 1940 census, that may be why. This site may be helpful:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ormultno/land/streets.htm

[sdengle]

Re: My thoughts on the 1940 Census

Thank you for mentioning the street name changes in Portland, Oregon! I just sent some new information that did not appear on the listing of old and new names. In 1930 I had found my grandparents and the owners of the house a couple blocks away that my parents bought in 1950 (with the same next door neighbors who still lived there in 1950). I have not yet looked at the 1940.

Susan

[TeriPettit]

Re: My thoughts on the 1940 Census

What I miss most is the "number of years married". It was very helpful, since often I have no other record of marriage date.

(The street name stuff isn't very relevant to me personally, since most of my relatives did not live anywhere that had named streets. I can just scroll through the entire precinct, all rural, and about half of the people listed are already in my database of relatives. Nearly all of them say "same house" in the 1935 residence column for everyone, even though it is generally untrue for at least one of the spouses in a couple who have been married less than five years. The census taker seems to have interpreted it to mean same county, and thus only filled it in if someone moved in from out of county, which is rare.)

[colinc]

Re: My thoughts on the 1940 Census

Hi,

A Brit uncle of mine moved to the US just before WWII to be an actor. He was born Robin Harry Salaman Cohen and took the name of Robin Craven either because of anti-Semitism or because there was anther actor called Robin Craven. He was born in London, England, on 20 Sept 1908.

He died in 1978 and his wife in 1998 and I no longer know his address, but it was in Manhattan in later life.

He served as an Ambulance driver with US forces when the Yanks joined the war and were liberating north Africa, so I guess in 1940 they would have been in New York.

Is there any way of finding him in the census?

Hope someone can help.

Cheers, Colin

https://www.MissingPortraits.info

[theKiwi]

Re: My thoughts on the 1940 Census

He served as an Ambulance driver with US forces when the Yanks joined the war and were liberating north Africa, so I guess in 1940 they would have been in New York.

Is there any way of finding him in the census?

Anyone can sign up with FamilySearch Indexing to index the 1940 Census.

http://the1940census.com/ and click on Getting Started.

For your query, once New York state is indexed, then you'll be able to find him by a name search - until then, unless you know where he lived it will be a massive amount of downloading and page viewing to find him.

So my suggestion is to wait a few more months - we've already waited 72 years - and help out with the indexing, then everyone will be able to find everybody (in an ideal world <g>).

I've indexed nearly 500 names, and arbitrated nearly 2000 names so far - most interesting page I've seen was a list of prisoners at Leavenworth, Kansas which I arbitrated today.

Cheers

Roger

[TeriPettit]

Re: My thoughts on the 1940 Census

He died in 1978 and his wife in 1998 and I no longer know his address, but it was in Manhattan in later life.

Perhaps you already have this, but the U.S. Public Records Index lists his address in 1959 as:

360 E 55th St, New York, NY, 10022-4118

This address is in enumeration district 31-1282, which is 9 pages long, containing all the residents of a large apartment building at the corner of East 55th St and First Avenue.

Of course, the chances that he was at the same address in 1940 and 1959 are somewhat slim.

[colinc]

Re: My thoughts on the 1940 Census

Thank you so much for that, both.

The address looks very familiar, and I am sure the only one I ever had. Not surprisingly I did not find him at http://tinyurl.com/83y8j4f but I am still vague about finding aids.

Is there any way of finding a name without an address, as with the UK census?

Thanks again, Colin

[theKiwi]

Re: My thoughts on the 1940 Census

Is there any way of finding a name without an address, as with the UK census?

Not until it is all indexed.

See above about how you can contribute to that to make it go faster :-)

Roger

[Howard Fink]

Re: My thoughts on the 1940 Census

Is there any way of finding a name without an address, as with the UK census?

Thanks again, Colin

If you do not know the address, and he was really in New York City (and had a telephone) then there is a way, because the New York Public Library has done a great job making the 1940 telephone directory for each of the five boroughs of New York available at: http://directme.nypl.org/ - click on the name of a borough to get to each directory, and then look up the alphabetic listing to find the address.

NB: I am suspicious about the given name of Robin as his birth name and suggest that it may have been Reuben or Ruben. Unfortunately there are a lot of Cohens in the directory...

[FKerstetter]

Re: My thoughts on the 1940 Census

Thank you so much for that, both.

The address looks very familiar, and I am sure the only one I ever had. Not surprisingly I did not find him at http://tinyurl.com/83y8j4f but I am still vague about finding aids.

Is there any way of finding a name without an address, as with the UK census?

Thanks again, Colin

Try city directory for New York City-years 1940-1943 to get a street address.

[colinc]

Re: My thoughts on the 1940 Census

Thanks again, but I don't think I can face trawling the US census with only one family member there.

However I would be interested to know how and when he went there - and I don