US Census 1940

On April 2, 2012, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in the U.S.A. released the images of the US Census taken in April 1940.   For anyone interested in Genealogy - seemingly even those of us outside of the U.S.A., this was big news.   To be honest, I was a bit indifferent about its release since the majority of the branches of the Family Tree I'm concentrating on right now are in Canada or Ireland.  But reading about it has been interesting.

In Canada, for example, we complete our Census every 5 years, and by law it can only be released for genealogical purposes after 92 years.  It is released completely for wide use after 112 years.    In the US, they complete their Census every 10 years, but it is released for use after 42 years.    (The 1911 Canadian Census was only very recently released due to finangling and disagreements within our government. )

Despite the fact that the 1940 Census is now released, it doesn't make it easily useable.... yet.  The *images* have been released.  But unless you know what state, county, city, and ward your relative lived in during the 1940's, as of this moment it's very difficult to find them.    That's why there are currently thousands of volunteers across the globe working to index those Census records.  Once indexed, amateur genealogists everywhere will be able to plug their relatives names into Ancestry.com or Archives.com, etc, and find out where they lived, who lived with them, military service, education, etc.

I am now a volunteer indexer.   I took a closer look at the process after reading a few blog posts about it and realizing I really would like to know where my family lived in the 1940's - particularly the ones in and around the Boston, Massachusetts area.  I went to Family Search and read through what would be expected of me, downloaded the software, and within 20 minutes I'd indexed 40 names.  I'm not over 1000 names and having fun doing it.  I haven't found relatives yet, but it's a great - and easy ! - process.

Even better, if I get "bored" entering census information there are hundreds of other documents waiting to be indexed.  Ship lists, passenger lists, transcripts, local census documents, cemetery transcriptions, etc.    As someone who types quickly, and actually enjoys data-entry, it's really quite enjoyable.  And it's kind of nice to give back to the community that's given me alot of fascinating information in recent years.