1940 US Census ~ Great Grandmother Hunter

Of my eight great-grandparents, only two great-grandparents were still living in 1940: my father's maternal grandmother, Mary Bowman Ashby Adsit, and my mother's maternal grandmother, Marguerite Lysle Hunter.

~~~~~~~

I found Marguerite L. Hunter soon after the release of the 1940 US Census on April 1, because I knew she was in Hampton Township, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, so I didn't need the index to find her.

1940 U.S. Census, Hampton, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, Roll T627_3404, E.D. 2-209,
page 12B, lines 49-52, household of Marguerite L. Hunter.

Living on Route 8 (no house number), Marguerite L. Hunter is the 63-year-old widowed head of household. Living with her are daughters Margaret (age 34 and single) and Mary Gerkan (age 36 and divorced) and a servant, Anna Zoeller. Five years before, Marguerite and Margaret lived in the same house and Mary lived in Pittsburgh. (That marriage and divorce is another story.)

Marguerite owns the house, it is valued at $25,000, and No, it is not a farm (although my mother always referred to the home as her grandmother's farm). [January 4, 2014 update: My mother re-read this post and told me that the "farm" was separate from this house, a couple of miles down the road. There was a tenant farmer who raised chickens and pigs and grew vegetables and hay.]

1940 US Census, column 33

None of them are listed with an occupation or salary/wages, (except for the servant, making $416 in 1939), but Marguerite, Margaret and Mary all indicate "Yes" they received income of $50 or more from sources other than money wages or salary.

Before great-grandfather Percy Hunter died in 1937, sometime between 1930 and 1935, Percy and Marguerite built their "house in the country" in Hampton Township, shown below, which my mother fondly remembers from her childhood. (See the 1930 census record of Percy and Marguerite still living in Pittsburgh.)

Home of Percy and Marguerite Hunter in Hampton Township, Pennsylvania

My mother's grandmother died in 1967 at age 91, so I will be looking for her in the 1950 and 1960 US Censuses.

Another 1940 Census Find - Edgar Rust in California

As noted in my previous post, indexes for the 1940 census are being made available at both Ancestry.com and at FamilySearch.org. When I noticed last week that Massachusetts was available at Ancestry.com, I made a point to search for Edgar Rust, born about 1882 in Massachusetts, in order to provide corrections in the index for just about everyone in the household due to the errors, not in the indexing, but in the enumeration. See here for my analysis of that household.

In recreating the search today, this is what I see:

I won't detail the corrections I had to make for the Rust family in Newton, but you can see that one correction I made was to Edgar's name which was indexed as Edna!

Last week, before I made that correction, it was the Edgar C. Rust in Monterey, California, which appeared as the top result.

1940 U.S. Census, Monterey, Monterey, California, Roll T627_268,
E. D. 27-34, page 83A, lines 9-10, record for Edgar C. Rust and Elizabeth Rust

The detail shows much more accurate information than what I found at their home in Massachusetts, which now I'm sure was reported by a neighbor because they were in California, where I understand they spent several months each year.

A 1940 Census Find - Grandfather Pyle

Ancestry.com has today announced that the complete 1940 US Census is indexed and available for searching. I knew that I'd have to use an index to find my paternal grandfather, Charles McAlpin Pyle (1893 - 1966) in the 1940 US Census, and as Washington, D.C., then New Jersey, then New York became available, I looked for him, with no luck, which narrowed down the possibility to Maryland. Sure enough, he was living in Ellicott City, Maryland, where I had previously discovered he lived in 1942 (WWII Draft Registration card).

1940 U.S. Census, Ellicott City, Howard, Maryland, Roll T627_1552,
E. D. 14-4, Page 1B, lines 47-48, household of Charles M. Pyle

The census reports that Charles M. Pyle was the 12th household visited, that he owned his home, though the value of the home is not reported. "Yes" indicates that he lives on a farm. He is listed as 48 years old, and born in Maryland, though I know he was 46 in April 1940 and born in New Jersey, not Maryland. He lived in the same place in 1935. This also notes that he is married and the "7" next to the "M" is the notation that was made for married people who did not live with their spouses.

The blank between "no" representing that he did not attend school and "Maryland" for place of birth is for highest grade of school completed. Although I'm not sure, I think he completed four years of college, but it would have been interesting to confirm.

Also in the household is Walter Rouse (indexed as Kouse?), who is indexed as his brother, but if you read the word, it is his Butler! He is a 32-year-old Negro, married, and born in Maryland. He also lived in the same place in 1935.

Important to note here is that there is no circled "x" which was used in this census to record who in a household reported the information. Therefore, Charles did not report his own details, and whatever neighbor provided information to the enumerator didn't know details such as exactly how old he was, where he was born, how much schooling he had, and the value of his home.



The remaining columns of information note that both men were at work for pay during the week of March 24-30, and that Charles worked 70 hours and Walter worked 60 hours during the previous week. Charles' occupation is Operator on a Farm, and Walter's occupation is "Butler + handy man." To the right of the codes, the census tells us that they both worked 52 weeks in 1939, Charles earning $0 and Walter earning $1,040 in salary or wages. Note that the last column "Yes" represents that Charles received "income of $50 or more from sources other than money wages or salary." Because of the way their income was reported, workers "working on own account" (OA) usually didn't report salaries or wages. Any money grandfather Pyle made on the farm or from other sources falls into this category. (His butler has the code "PW" which means he was a wage or salary worker in private work.)

So this begs the question, where was his wife?

Update on 1940 US Census Indexing

Thanks to the efforts of more than 125,000 volunteers, the 1940 US Census is more than 50% indexed! According to the 1940 US Census Community Project, this is one month ahead of schedule.

As of June 7, 2012, there are 18 states and territories that have been indexed and are searchable. Click here to see the current status.

I'm pleased that I have been able to be a part of this indexing project, and I get to share the following badges representing the states that I have indexed.

The first state available for indexing after the release on April 2 was Colorado, so that's what I worked on at the beginning.

Once Pennsylvania was available to index, I did quite a bit of indexing there because the first county to index was Allegheny, where my mother was in 1940, as well as quite a few family members.

Because I've lived in Massachusetts for my entire life, and am familiar with place names, I did quite a bit of indexing of Massachusetts records. And this is where my dad was living in 1940.

After reading about others who are tackling New York, I thought I'd give it a try. My husband has family in New York in 1940, and I have a great uncle I'd like to find, too.

Let's work together to index 100% of the 1940 US Census and make it freely searchable to the whole genealogy community! If you're not already signed up, volunteer here.

Error in 1940 Census ~ No Charles Pyle

I was so excited to find my 15-year-old dad with his remarried mother and step-father in the 1940 U.S. Census. I knew exactly where they were living, too: at 22 Reservoir Road, Newton, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and I had found the enumeration district of 9-454.

Imagine my disappointment when I found the record and it contained numerous errors.

1940 U.S. Census, Newton, Middlesex, Massachusetts, Roll T627_1616, E.D. 9-454
page 2B, lines 69-75, household of Edgar C. Rust

Detail from above census image of Rust family: left-hand columns

Edgar C. Rust was my step-grandfather. His home at 22 Reservoir Avenue was the 29th visited by the census enumerator. He owned the home and it was valued at $51,000. (It was not a farm.)

The 1940 US Census is the first census that indicated with a circled X who answered the enumerator's questions. Note that no one in this household has a circled X next to his or her name, so I don't know who provided the enumerator with the family's information, but they got a lot of it wrong!

Funny Friday ~ Three Stooges as Census Takers

Okay, we've been working hard exploring the 1940 US Census this week.

Time to take a break and see the Three Stooges in No Census, No Feeling, released in October 1940.

This is a short clip from the full episode:

The full episode follows:

(Disclosure: I am one of the few females who loves the Three Stooges.)

Update: Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings found Moe Howard in the 1940 Census.

Margaret, Ann and Caroline in the 1940 US Census

Yesterday, April 2, 2012, the 1940 US Census was released with all images made public at the National Archives 1940 Census site. However, there were millions of genealogists trying to access the site and very few were able to retrieve any census images. (NARA reported 22.5 million "hits" in the first few hours!)

Ancestry.com, which purchased the census images from NARA, received them at 12:01 a.m. on Monday morning and started uploading the images state by state. In addition to some U.S. territories, there were a few states fully uploaded on Monday. One that was "in process" was Pennsylvania. It was not until this morning that the Enumeration Districts for Pittsburgh were available. I'm finding the interface at Ancestry easier and faster to access than the interface at NARA.

I knew that my 5-year-old mother would be living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at 836 North Highland Avenue. There is no index yet, so in order to search, I had to know the Enumeration District of 69-260, which I had discovered last August. I had to look through almost all of the 32 images for this E.D. until I got to image 29, where I found them!

1940 U.S. Census, Ward 11, Pittsburgh, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, Roll T627_3659, E.D. 69-260,
page 15A, lines 35-40, household of Lowell Copeland.

There's my grandfather, Lowell Copeland on line 35. He owned his home at 836 North Highland Avenue and it was valued at $10,000. Grandmother is on the next line. The mark next to her name is a circled x, which indicates that she was the one who answered the census enumerator's questions. Below that we see Margaret, Ann, and Caroline! It wasn't for several years that Margaret's name was legally changed to Margot, although she was called Margot almost immediately after she was born. The family also had a 19-year-old servant living with them, Helen Bunsen, who likely helped with the three young girls. (And as we know, they were a handful.)

[January 4, 2014, update: My mother re-read this post and noted that it was in 1954 that her parents had to go to court (she was a minor at the time, but was getting her first passport) to tell a judge that they had always called her Margot so could the name legally be changed for the passport application.]

Some interesting features of this census include:
Highest grade of school completed: Grandfather had (C4) four years of college and Grandmother had (H4) four years of High School.
Where the person was living five years previously: For Grandfather, Grandmother, and Margaret, it was "same house." (Needless to say, this field was left blank for children under the age of 5.)
Additional information about employment: Grandfather was employed as a Salesman in the Advertising industry. In this census, we find that in the previous week, he worked 48 hours. He was a "Wage/Salary Worker in Private Work" (PW in column 30) and made $3,000 working 52 weeks in 1939. The far right column indicates, no, he did not earn more than $50 in income other than wages or salaries.

Not a whole lot of new information, but this does give a bit of insight into my mother's family when she was a young child, just before they moved to a suburb just north of the city of Pittsburgh.

What was my family like in 1940?

Following is a cool infographic from Archives.com. This is the company that won the contract to build and maintain the servers that will house the 1940 US Census images for NARA.



Additional help to find your ancestor's enumeration district can be found by using Steve Morse's One-Step Website. I am very excited to spend time next week at NARA's 1940 Census website looking for some of my ancestors (including my mother and father and all my grandparents) in the 1940 US Census!

Tuesday's Tip ~ FamilySearch Indexing Advice

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I have recently started indexing for FamilySearch.org, and I will be helping index the 1940 US Census when it is released on April 2.

For new indexers, there is a brief instructional video and there are instructions within each "batch" that you index, which I do my best to follow, but after indexing a few batches, I still had questions about how to enter some items. For example, sometimes a name is printed at the top of a draft registration card, but the signature at the bottom didn't agree, or in entering a foreign place name for place of birth, how much effort should I make to correct the spelling of that place, or do I index it exactly as written?

Everything I'm indexing is also being indexed by someone else. When there is a difference in an entry, that entry goes to an arbitrator who reviews the entry and makes a decision on what the entry should be. Indexers can check their Arbitration Results and see how often they agree with the arbitrator. When a "batch" is not 100% accurate, it's a good idea to check to see why, in order to improve your indexing skills. (As somewhat of a perfectionist, I'm aiming for 100% accuracy.)

When I recently contacted FamilySearch to ask about why a couple of my indexed items were changed, I received an email directing me to a section of their website that I had not been aware of. New indexers may find the information at the following links helpful. Hopefully these links won't change so future indexers can find them from this post:

Indexing Resource Guide is a page with several links, including handwriting help.

Basic Indexing Guidelines are instructions for all projects. If project instructions, field helps, or project updates do not answer an indexing question, refer to Basic Indexing Guidelines for an answer to the question. At the bottom of this page are links to other helpful pages with specific advice for indexing names, place names, dates and ages.

Basic Indexing Guidelines: Names and Basic Indexing Guidelines: Place Names were particularly helpful for me.

I also just recently found what looks like a new or updated publication in PDF form: A User's Guide to FamilySearch Indexing (March 2012) which I plan to read through before April 2. If you think you'll have even just a little time in the next few months to help with indexing the 1940 US Census, please help out. We all will have ancestors that we won't be able to find without the index.

Tuesday's Tip is a daily blogging prompt from Geneabloggers, the genealogy community's resource for blogging. It is used by many genealogy bloggers to help them tell stories of their ancestors.

Workday Wednesday ~ Uncle Chester, Census Enumerator

My great grandfather, Percy Hunter, was one of ten children. All of the siblings were born and died in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, except for one brother, Chester Audley Hunter.

Great great uncle Chester married a woman from West Virginia and moved to Morgantown, West Virginia, where I found him in the 1930 U.S. Federal Census.

1930 U.S. Federal Census, Union City, Monongalia, West Virginia; Roll: 2548; Page: 12A;
Enumeration District: 27; Record for Chester A. Hunter

The last two names on this page are Chester A. Hunter and Minnie D. Hunter, who had married two years before. Farther to the right, under the occupation column, you see that Chester's occupation is Enumerator and his industry is Census. Then below that you see that he has signed off on this Enumeration District 31-27:

I can't wait to see if he was an enumerator in the 1940 US Census! And 72 years later, his great great niece (me) is a 1940 US Census Ambassador!

Following is a video created by the US Census Bureau to train enumerators on the correct procedures for filling out the 1940 US Census. About two minutes in, you can see how an enumerator might have interviewed a resident to obtain information about the households in his Enumeration District.

Workday Wednesday is a daily blogging prompt from Geneabloggers, the genealogy community's resource for blogging. It is used by many genealogy bloggers to help them tell stories of their ancestors.

1940 US Census ~ You Can Help Index

When the 1940 US Census becomes available to the public on April 2, 2012, images will be free on 1940census.archives.gov (until the end of 2013), thanks to a partnership between Archives.com and the National Archives. This means that anyone will be able to freely browse the images, but there will be no index so you'll have to know where your family members lived in order to find them. Volunteers are being recruited to help index the census through an indexing initiative called the 1940 US Census Community Project. You can sign up at 1940 US Census Community Project.

The 1940 US Census Community Project is co-sponsored by Archives.com, FamilySearch.org, and findmypast.com. The goal is to get the 1940 US Census indexed within six months, but if those interested can take a little time and index a few pages, perhaps it can be indexed even sooner!

If you have never done indexing before, you are encouraged to download the software at FamilySearch.org and help out with some of their other ongoing indexing projects. (If you have a FamilySearch ID, you can log in with that username and password). There is a short instructional video, then you can start indexing. There are different difficulty levels and most "batches" usually don't take much more than 20-30 minutes to complete.

I've recently started indexing at FamilySearch and now that I've indexed a few batches, my advice is to read the instructions that are always in a box in the lower left hand side of the screen, and take advantage of the "Lookup" feature, found under Edit > Lookup, where you can help decipher a person or place name for which you can read most but not all of the letters.

I hope many genealogists will volunteer some time to index at least a few images for the 1940 US Census.

How to Search the 1940 US Census before there's an Index

When the 1940 Census is released on April 2, 2012, by NARA (National Archives and Records Administration), at first only the digital images will be made publicly available (free) at the official 1940census.archives.gov.

The 1940 U.S. Census Community Project, a joint initiative between Archives.com, FamilySearch.org, findmypast.com, is coordinating efforts to provide access to these digital images and start indexing them to make the ability to search online.  If you are interested in volunteering to help index the images, visit The 1940 U.S. Census Community Project to sign up.

Last summer, I wrote about how to search for individuals in the 1940 census before indexes are available. See Tuesday's Tip ~ Getting Ready for the 1940 Census for details on how I did this to find out the enumeration districts I will browse through to find my parents.

The key websites you'll want to use to find your family members' enumeration districts (E.D.'s) are:
How to Access the 1940 Census "Quiz" at Steve Morse's One-Step website, where you'll have to know the street address your family member lived at.
Archival Research Catalog of the National Archives, where you'll want to search on "1940 Census Map [city] [state]" and look for the "digital copy available" icon at the left.

If you can't wait for the index to be completed, which could take six months, you'll want to do some preparation using these tools to narrow down where to look for your family members. Of course, this assumes you know the address where your family members are living. Good luck!

1940 Census ~ What You Will Find

Although the basic reason for a census is to count the number of residents of a community, a state, or a country, each census asks for different information. The 1930 US Census had a column that asked if the household owned a radio.

The 1940 US Census asked 34 questions of all residents. Some of the interesting things that the 1940 census will reveal about a household include:

What is the highest grade of school completed for this person?

In what place did this person live on April 1, 1935?

How much income did this person earn during 1939?

Did this person receive income of $50 or more from sources other than money wages or salary? (Yes or No)

The census sheet will look similar to that of the 1920 or 1930 census, with 40 names on a sheet. For those "lucky" enough to be on lines 14 or 29 (about 5% of the population), there are an additional 16 questions asking about where that person's parents were born, language spoken in home in earliest childhood, and for all women who are or have been married, has she been married more than once, age at first marriage, and number of children ever born (excluding stillbirths).

If you want to read about all of the questions that were asked of our family members in the 1940 census, visit the 1940 census enumerator instructions.

The 1940 Census is Coming...

I have signed up to be a 1940 Census Ambassador. In the next 37 days, I hope to share some information about the release of the 1940 US Census with my readers.

United States Federal Census records become available 72 years after the date they were taken. I remember in April 2002, visiting the National Archives in Waltham, MA to look at the 1930 census on microfilm for family members. (I still didn't find my five-year-old dad until these records were digitized.) January 1992 would have been when the 1920 census was released because the 1920 census was taken as of January 1, 1920. I had only just started researching census records at that time (on microfilm, at the National Archives.)

April 2, 2012 is the magic date for the 1940 US Census to become public!

Just think of all the people you know who you'll be able to find!

I'll be looking for my five-year-old mother and her family, my fifteen-year-old dad and his family, as well as my parents-in-law and their families!

Guess what I'll be doing on the morning of April 2 ... visiting the official site of the 1940 US Census!