8 ms·

1950 Census Records

105 points by hhs 5y ago

drewg123 5y ago
I was using this to try to find the records that included my family. The search for 'Firstname Lastname" seems to search for Firstname OR Lastname. Does anybody know if its possible to search for Firstname AND Lastname and what the syntax for that might be? It seems to just still match any of the strings when entered that way.
- geogra4 5y ago
  Yes, almost impossible to find someone otherwise
  - drewg123 5y ago
    It seems impossible to find anyone regardless. My mom's family has common names, so there are pages and pages to wade through. Meanwhile my dad's family has a very unusual last name, but their data seems to be missing from the 1950 census.
- armagon 5y ago
  Perhaps someone knows more, but from what I can see, my conclusion is no. The search box says "First and/or Last Name" The tips at https://1950census.archives.gov/search/ https://1950census.archives.gov/search/ say: > Tip #1: Search for the first and last name of the head of household (plus state and county of residence if known) because the surname was written on the census form only on the line for the head of household and other persons in the household with a different surname. > Tip #3: You don't have to know the exact spelling of a person's name in order to perform a name search. Enter as much as you know. The search engine will return any close variations or matches. The FAQ also adds: > Is there a name index to the 1950 Census? > Yes, researchers will be able to search the 1950 census by name. Please note that the name index will not be 100% accurate because it is based on optical character recognition (OCR) and artificial intelligence/machine learning. The website will feature a transcription tool to enable users to submit name updates, which will improve the accuracy of the name index and make the records more accessible for everyone.
- redytedy 5y ago
  Wait for this to appear on FamilySearch (if not already) and search there I think will be your best bet. FamilySearch is owned by the Mormons but free and very functional.
  - drewg123 5y ago
    Yes, they are the best. I used them several years ago when constructing my family tree. And a big raspberry to their competitors that lock everything behind a paywall. I think one of them (ancestry) has exclusive deals with some states, so they have records you can't see without signing up.
    - Asparagirl 5y ago
      They do. I’ve seen the contracts, and even the RFP’s that led to the contracts. It’s illegal. They will sometimes make a free gateway portal to those records, where you input your in-state zipcode to get access, or some other nonsense like that. But they actually have the gall to say in their contracts that the digital files cannot be redistributed by the (public, taxpayer-funded) state or local archive. Funny, the state law says they can’t do that… And so the non-profit I founded and run is starting to reclaim those public records, for the public, for free.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - JaimeThompson 5y ago
        If you can please link to the non-profit here, I think a lot of us would enjoy it.
        Asparagirl 5y ago
        It’s in my HN bio, but here you go ;-) https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/ https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/
- codegeek 5y ago
  Enter FirstName then space then LastName. It worked for me for a random "John Smith" in Camden, NJ.
- xefer 5y ago
  If you happen to know the address of where the individual lived, you can make a much more targeted search if you know the census enumeration district. With the ED in hand, just looking up by last name may be sufficient, but you can also just step through the individual sheets. This site has a way to look up the ED by street address: https://stevemorse.org/census/unified.html https://stevemorse.org/census/unified.html Depending on the street, there will be 1 or more districts; e.g.: "9-27", etc. Just enter that string in the "Enumeration District" search field. I knew the addresses of several relatives based on the 1940 census and it made looking them up in the 1950 census very easy.
sebmellen 5y ago
Wow, that is a trip. Amazing to see my father's family all laid out like this https://1950census.archives.gov/search/?county=Nassau&name=werner%20mellen&page=1&state=NY https://1950census.archives.gov/search/?county=Nassau&name=w.... I had no idea the census data was so well archived. The machine learning is truly impressive, because some of the writing is hardly legible.
- clsec 5y ago
  It took me a while to find my family because my name is obscure, which you would think would be the opposite. Because it's obscure the census takers had a hard time getting the spelling right and would cross it out and rewrite it. Which, in turn, seems like it made it much harder for the ML to figure out.
csdvrx 5y ago
What's concerning to me is that 1) the census is mandatory on the basis that the answers are private but 2) all the information will be made public about 70 years later. What if you don't want to volunteer your information?
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  There is a balance between privacy and the public interest (historical records). For example, immigration data ("A-files") from USCIS is released after 100 years of an immigrant's birth date to the National Archives [1], under the assumption that everyone is deceased after 100 years and no longer have rights to privacy protections (US-centric law). This is the same reason FamilySearch (the Mormon genealogy application) is very aggressive about ensuring you properly mark subjects as deceased or not. There is a duty of care with regards to a living subject's vital information that does not exist for the deceased (deceased subject vital information is available to all on FamilySearch, living subject vital information is only available to the account that created the record). 70 years seems reasonable considering the lack of sensitivity of census information, and while rental records aren't public, property ownership records are and are frequently used as well for location information (FamilySearch indexes public property record information for ancestor location hints and other vital correlation [2]). [1] https://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/aliens https://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/aliens [2] https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/United_States_Land_and_Property https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/United_States_Land_and_...
  - csdvrx 5y ago
    That is even more concerning! I believe my right to privacy is more important than any public interest or historical record. > This is the same reason FamilySearch (the Mormon genealogy application) is very aggressive about ensuring you properly mark subjects as deceased or not. What if I want to ensure I will never be posthumously baptized? https://deannaizme.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/mormons-and-posthumous-baptism/ https://deannaizme.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/mormons-and-post... There may be an "opt out" by contacting the LDS, but them not having my information making that possible in the first place would guarantee the end result, far more than trusting them to keep their word! And what about the next religious movement that tries to do the same? I think we need an equivalent of the GPDR right to be forgotten. Some people care about their legacy? I don't! When I'm dead, I want to be scrubbed from all records, census included.
ilamont 5y ago
Genealogists are really excited about the 1950 census, because a slew of new questions were included. A blogger I follow lists what to expect: https://climbingmyfamilytree.blogspot.com/p/1950-census.html https://climbingmyfamilytree.blogspot.com/p/1950-census.html One of the more interesting optional annotations: Enumerators could note if they thought the respondent was lying, and write down what they thought the truth was! (https://climbingmyfamilytree.blogspot.com/2020/01/extra-notations-and-detailed-answers-in.html https://climbingmyfamilytree.blogspot.com/2020/01/extra-nota...) As others have pointed out, FamilySearch will be indexing the records and making them available for free. It's a massive effort involving hundreds of thousands of volunteers plus a large investment in technology and other resources: https://www.familysearch.org/en/info/1950-census-details https://www.familysearch.org/en/info/1950-census-details By comparison, Ancestry (now owned by Blackstone Inc.) will charge money to access these public records ... and this comes on heels of jacking up subscription prices across the board, up to 25% (https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/blog/were-increasing-our-monthly-subscription-prices-help-provide-you-more-content-and-new-product https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/blog/were-increasing-our-...) MyHeritage is also indexing 1950 records, but these will be paywalled like Ancestry.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ianhawes 5y ago
  FamilySearch has unique records from the Philippines related to my wife's (long lost) family that are indexed but not viewable. They're not viewable because they only permit Mormons to view them. The index is not useful because it only includes the name and not the additional information present on the vital document. IMO FamilySearch is the worst of the 3 big genealogy websites.
  - ilamont 5y ago
    > They're not viewable because they only permit Mormons to view them. Do you have a source for that? I'm not a Mormon, and can use the site without restriction, including viewing records from other countries. The site does not ask questions about religious affiliation when registering. Regarding indexing: For some types of documents it's incomplete or the volunteer crew hasn't gotten around to it. I always check the original image when it's presented to get extra details. For what it's worth, Ancestry has similar problems in its own index and the way it organizes some data. Some records are not viewable at all, just a very high-level index entry that reads more like a footnote.
anonymousiam 5y ago
How long will it be before the 1950 images are digitized so that they may be searched more effectively?
- kbutler 5y ago
  There is a crowd-sourced effort to "index" (create textual copies of the information) in the images sponsored by FamilySearch https://www.familysearch.org/1950census/ https://www.familysearch.org/1950census/ They will make the images and data searchable and available for free (free registration required). I don't know how long the overall effort will take - but you can also participate as much as you like!
999900000999 5y ago
What a great historical piece. Very interesting to see their is no Hispanic race option. California ?! 70 years is a very good amount of time , by the most of the people affected are dead, and the living can glace back into the past. Cool to see jobs being listed as well, you can trace a families path from poverty to affluence and perhaps vice versa.
- mbustamanter 5y ago
  After looking at several records, it appears that Hispanics have a superscript 0 after the 'W' for white. Hispanic, strictly speaking, is not a race as people from Central and South America have different percentages of spanish, indigenous and in some cases african ancestry. I wonder how it came to be regarded as one in the US (I'm not american).
  - not2b 5y ago
    It isn't treated as a race in the US either, it's a separate question (so people can identify as white and Hispanic, or black and Hispanic, or other combinations).
- eckmLJE 5y ago
  You may find this listen/read very interesting: https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2021/03/chicanos-the-census-and-celia-cruz-inventing-latino/618248/ https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2021/03/chicano...
numbers 5y ago
I'm looking at a population schedule and I'm wondering what "W(C)" means under race?
- ldayley 5y ago
  pure speculation here, but that could be "White (and of Caucasian origin)
garrickvanburen 5y ago
After spending 3+ years fighting with Ancestry’s UI for census data - I’m delighted to see how good the UI is, on day 1, from a .gov - well done to all involved
- gshakir 5y ago
  Thanks, I will relay this to the team.
Kon-Peki 5y ago
If someone was serving in Korea at this time, they aren't going to show up in these records, are they? EDIT - the Census would have been conducted in spring 1950, while the first troops arrived in July 1950. So presumably they would have been on military bases in the US and then perhaps counted in the census...
- bombcar 5y ago
  They may have been counted at their "home" depending on if someone was there to respond that they were "in residence".
gshakir 5y ago
You can also download the whole data in bulk at https://registry.opendata.aws/nara-1950-census/ https://registry.opendata.aws/nara-1950-census/
kragen 5y ago
Neat, I just found my grandparents, great-grandmother, uncle, and aunt.
aimor 5y ago
I'm trying to download the high quality ED Map and I keep getting "Endpoint request timed out" errors. Any ideas on how to get around this?
- gshakir 5y ago
  Try the data on the AWS Open Data platform.

1950 Census Records

105 points by hhs 5y ago

I was using this to try to find the records that included my family. The search for 'Firstname Lastname" seems to search for Firstname OR Lastname. Does anybody know if its possible to search for Firstname AND Lastname and what the syntax for that might be? It seems to just still match any of the strings when entered that way.

geogra4 5y ago
Yes, almost impossible to find someone otherwise
- drewg123 5y ago
  It seems impossible to find anyone regardless. My mom's family has common names, so there are pages and pages to wade through. Meanwhile my dad's family has a very unusual last name, but their data seems to be missing from the 1950 census.
armagon 5y ago
Perhaps someone knows more, but from what I can see, my conclusion is no. The search box says "First and/or Last Name" The tips at https://1950census.archives.gov/search/ https://1950census.archives.gov/search/ say: > Tip #1: Search for the first and last name of the head of household (plus state and county of residence if known) because the surname was written on the census form only on the line for the head of household and other persons in the household with a different surname. > Tip #3: You don't have to know the exact spelling of a person's name in order to perform a name search. Enter as much as you know. The search engine will return any close variations or matches. The FAQ also adds: > Is there a name index to the 1950 Census? > Yes, researchers will be able to search the 1950 census by name. Please note that the name index will not be 100% accurate because it is based on optical character recognition (OCR) and artificial intelligence/machine learning. The website will feature a transcription tool to enable users to submit name updates, which will improve the accuracy of the name index and make the records more accessible for everyone.
redytedy 5y ago
Wait for this to appear on FamilySearch (if not already) and search there I think will be your best bet. FamilySearch is owned by the Mormons but free and very functional.
- drewg123 5y ago
  Yes, they are the best. I used them several years ago when constructing my family tree. And a big raspberry to their competitors that lock everything behind a paywall. I think one of them (ancestry) has exclusive deals with some states, so they have records you can't see without signing up.
  - Asparagirl 5y ago
    They do. I’ve seen the contracts, and even the RFP’s that led to the contracts. It’s illegal. They will sometimes make a free gateway portal to those records, where you input your in-state zipcode to get access, or some other nonsense like that. But they actually have the gall to say in their contracts that the digital files cannot be redistributed by the (public, taxpayer-funded) state or local archive. Funny, the state law says they can’t do that… And so the non-profit I founded and run is starting to reclaim those public records, for the public, for free.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - JaimeThompson 5y ago
      If you can please link to the non-profit here, I think a lot of us would enjoy it.
      - Asparagirl 5y ago
        It’s in my HN bio, but here you go ;-) https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/ https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/
codegeek 5y ago
Enter FirstName then space then LastName. It worked for me for a random "John Smith" in Camden, NJ.
xefer 5y ago
If you happen to know the address of where the individual lived, you can make a much more targeted search if you know the census enumeration district. With the ED in hand, just looking up by last name may be sufficient, but you can also just step through the individual sheets. This site has a way to look up the ED by street address: https://stevemorse.org/census/unified.html https://stevemorse.org/census/unified.html Depending on the street, there will be 1 or more districts; e.g.: "9-27", etc. Just enter that string in the "Enumeration District" search field. I knew the addresses of several relatives based on the 1940 census and it made looking them up in the 1950 census very easy.

sebmellen 5y ago

Wow, that is a trip. Amazing to see my father's family all laid out like this https://1950census.archives.gov/search/?county=Nassau&name=werner%20mellen&page=1&state=NY https://1950census.archives.gov/search/?county=Nassau&name=w.... I had no idea the census data was so well archived. The machine learning is truly impressive, because some of the writing is hardly legible.

clsec 5y ago
It took me a while to find my family because my name is obscure, which you would think would be the opposite. Because it's obscure the census takers had a hard time getting the spelling right and would cross it out and rewrite it. Which, in turn, seems like it made it much harder for the ML to figure out.

csdvrx 5y ago

What's concerning to me is that 1) the census is mandatory on the basis that the answers are private but 2) all the information will be made public about 70 years later. What if you don't want to volunteer your information?

toomuchtodo 5y ago
There is a balance between privacy and the public interest (historical records). For example, immigration data ("A-files") from USCIS is released after 100 years of an immigrant's birth date to the National Archives [1], under the assumption that everyone is deceased after 100 years and no longer have rights to privacy protections (US-centric law). This is the same reason FamilySearch (the Mormon genealogy application) is very aggressive about ensuring you properly mark subjects as deceased or not. There is a duty of care with regards to a living subject's vital information that does not exist for the deceased (deceased subject vital information is available to all on FamilySearch, living subject vital information is only available to the account that created the record). 70 years seems reasonable considering the lack of sensitivity of census information, and while rental records aren't public, property ownership records are and are frequently used as well for location information (FamilySearch indexes public property record information for ancestor location hints and other vital correlation [2]). [1] https://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/aliens https://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/aliens [2] https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/United_States_Land_and_Property https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/United_States_Land_and_...
- csdvrx 5y ago
  That is even more concerning! I believe my right to privacy is more important than any public interest or historical record. > This is the same reason FamilySearch (the Mormon genealogy application) is very aggressive about ensuring you properly mark subjects as deceased or not. What if I want to ensure I will never be posthumously baptized? https://deannaizme.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/mormons-and-posthumous-baptism/ https://deannaizme.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/mormons-and-post... There may be an "opt out" by contacting the LDS, but them not having my information making that possible in the first place would guarantee the end result, far more than trusting them to keep their word! And what about the next religious movement that tries to do the same? I think we need an equivalent of the GPDR right to be forgotten. Some people care about their legacy? I don't! When I'm dead, I want to be scrubbed from all records, census included.

ilamont 5y ago

Genealogists are really excited about the 1950 census, because a slew of new questions were included. A blogger I follow lists what to expect: https://climbingmyfamilytree.blogspot.com/p/1950-census.html https://climbingmyfamilytree.blogspot.com/p/1950-census.html One of the more interesting optional annotations: Enumerators could note if they thought the respondent was lying, and write down what they thought the truth was! (https://climbingmyfamilytree.blogspot.com/2020/01/extra-notations-and-detailed-answers-in.html https://climbingmyfamilytree.blogspot.com/2020/01/extra-nota...) As others have pointed out, FamilySearch will be indexing the records and making them available for free. It's a massive effort involving hundreds of thousands of volunteers plus a large investment in technology and other resources: https://www.familysearch.org/en/info/1950-census-details https://www.familysearch.org/en/info/1950-census-details By comparison, Ancestry (now owned by Blackstone Inc.) will charge money to access these public records ... and this comes on heels of jacking up subscription prices across the board, up to 25% (https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/blog/were-increasing-our-monthly-subscription-prices-help-provide-you-more-content-and-new-product https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/blog/were-increasing-our-...) MyHeritage is also indexing 1950 records, but these will be paywalled like Ancestry.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ianhawes 5y ago
FamilySearch has unique records from the Philippines related to my wife's (long lost) family that are indexed but not viewable. They're not viewable because they only permit Mormons to view them. The index is not useful because it only includes the name and not the additional information present on the vital document. IMO FamilySearch is the worst of the 3 big genealogy websites.
- ilamont 5y ago
  > They're not viewable because they only permit Mormons to view them. Do you have a source for that? I'm not a Mormon, and can use the site without restriction, including viewing records from other countries. The site does not ask questions about religious affiliation when registering. Regarding indexing: For some types of documents it's incomplete or the volunteer crew hasn't gotten around to it. I always check the original image when it's presented to get extra details. For what it's worth, Ancestry has similar problems in its own index and the way it organizes some data. Some records are not viewable at all, just a very high-level index entry that reads more like a footnote.

anonymousiam 5y ago

How long will it be before the 1950 images are digitized so that they may be searched more effectively?

kbutler 5y ago
There is a crowd-sourced effort to "index" (create textual copies of the information) in the images sponsored by FamilySearch https://www.familysearch.org/1950census/ https://www.familysearch.org/1950census/ They will make the images and data searchable and available for free (free registration required). I don't know how long the overall effort will take - but you can also participate as much as you like!

999900000999 5y ago

What a great historical piece. Very interesting to see their is no Hispanic race option. California ?! 70 years is a very good amount of time , by the most of the people affected are dead, and the living can glace back into the past. Cool to see jobs being listed as well, you can trace a families path from poverty to affluence and perhaps vice versa.

mbustamanter 5y ago
After looking at several records, it appears that Hispanics have a superscript 0 after the 'W' for white. Hispanic, strictly speaking, is not a race as people from Central and South America have different percentages of spanish, indigenous and in some cases african ancestry. I wonder how it came to be regarded as one in the US (I'm not american).
- not2b 5y ago
  It isn't treated as a race in the US either, it's a separate question (so people can identify as white and Hispanic, or black and Hispanic, or other combinations).
eckmLJE 5y ago
You may find this listen/read very interesting: https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2021/03/chicanos-the-census-and-celia-cruz-inventing-latino/618248/ https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2021/03/chicano...

numbers 5y ago

I'm looking at a population schedule and I'm wondering what "W(C)" means under race?

ldayley 5y ago
pure speculation here, but that could be "White (and of Caucasian origin)

garrickvanburen 5y ago

After spending 3+ years fighting with Ancestry’s UI for census data - I’m delighted to see how good the UI is, on day 1, from a .gov - well done to all involved

gshakir 5y ago
Thanks, I will relay this to the team.

Kon-Peki 5y ago

If someone was serving in Korea at this time, they aren't going to show up in these records, are they? EDIT - the Census would have been conducted in spring 1950, while the first troops arrived in July 1950. So presumably they would have been on military bases in the US and then perhaps counted in the census...

bombcar 5y ago
They may have been counted at their "home" depending on if someone was there to respond that they were "in residence".

gshakir 5y ago

You can also download the whole data in bulk at https://registry.opendata.aws/nara-1950-census/ https://registry.opendata.aws/nara-1950-census/

kragen 5y ago

Neat, I just found my grandparents, great-grandmother, uncle, and aunt.

aimor 5y ago

I'm trying to download the high quality ED Map and I keep getting "Endpoint request timed out" errors. Any ideas on how to get around this?

gshakir 5y ago
Try the data on the AWS Open Data platform.