1950 UNITED STATES CENSUS TO BE RELEASED APRIL 1 2021 - THREE DAYS FROM NOW! NARA READY!

 At one in the afternoon on April 1st, 2021, the United States Federal Census for the year 1950 will officially be released to the public through NARA, the National Archives of the United States. This census will have special counts for babies, for transients, for Native Americans (Indians) and will be an exciting way to find the history of your family, while also better understanding American society and culture at that time.

This census reflects the 'after World War II boom' in the economy.  In my opinion, the questions the census takers had to ask show the concern the government had that a family have a breadwinner. Men will be asked what their education is and what their employment is. Those who served in the armed forces during World War II and were honorably discharged could get GI loans to buy houses and  enroll in special education programs. 

The Hungarian families who had immigrated to America in the late 1800's and early 1900's and started out in ethnic ghettos were now into a second or third, maybe even fourth or fitth,generation and moving into affordable suburban houses. The suburbs were being built, as were roadways to accommodate the commuter. Most everyone could afford a mortgage and a car. As a result of all that building, entirely new neighborhood of single family dwellings had to be counted.  (Today housing affordability is a major issue through much of the United States.  Gas for cars is at an all-time high, making the days for average folk just cruising in a car for fun quite over. Our President Joseph Biden wants us to shore up that infrastructure.)

Women who had worked during the war in factories, and as some thought, had taken over jobs for men during those years, were now encouraged to be stay at home wives and mothers and let the men support them.  Many children were born; this was the Baby Boomers generation.  Women will be asked about their education but not their employment. I suppose women who went to college went thinking this was where they would find a good, educated, husband. Women were also asked how many times they have given birth while married, separated, or divorced.

I know that many of you are eager to get started on finding your family circa 1950.

NARA has, during the Covid shut down, continued to work on the release of this census remotely. Thousands of employees got it to where it will be on April 1st.  ENUMERATION DISTRICTS and maps have been defined.  INDEXING will be done by artificial intelligence machines, with humans able to make corrections. Some of the pages will really need some work since the originals are dull or frayed.  Some of the big database companies say they will have indexing done by sometime this summer.  The endeavor is considerably more expansive than the work on the 1940 census.

Most likely the NARA site will all be jammed up for the first days or weeks as people go on the site to search. So what you can do right now is find the likely ED district for your family.  One way to do this is, providing the family has not moved between 1940 and 1950 is to use the ED and street information for 1940 to see what ED it is in 1950.  For some, it will be fun to see parents or grandparents who are in college, staying at the Y, or in the military, living on their own.

I'm linking to the NARA 1950 census main page here: NATIONAL ARCHIVES GOV - RESEARCH CENSUS 1950

Check out the YouTube NARA series about this census as well!

C 2022 Magyar American BlogSPot

LEARN MORE ABOUT HUNGARIAN SOCIETY and CULTURE at HUNGARIAN NATIONAL DIGITAL ARCHIVES including HUNGARIAN JEWISH CULTURE

MANDACORE HUNGARY : ENGLISH VERSION   This links to an essay on personal cleanliness but there are also many other articles about how Hungarian people did things in the past, such how they made soap to how they did baby care, such as no strollers or prams but a mom could take a cradle into the fields, that are translated into English. We can learn a lot about how our great grandparents and ancestors lived in those days before houses had indoor plumbing and toilets. Men and boys used a tub first, then the women and children, then the baby - which is where we got the saying about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  My sensibility is that the baby might have needed to be first! I know soap can sanitize but I also know that going too long without bathing can mean infections. (Lately some Hollywood stars have been commenting about how they do not personally bathe too often.)

You can also do a search and many interesting things come up in Hungarian, such as booklets about places that were probably intended for tourists to various cities and regions that include images as well as statistical work. I'm finding that searching for the region or town is helpful. 

Of interest to Jewish Hungarian ancestry are lists of tradespeople who are keeping the Sabbath and other books of lists of members.

Follow me.  First I searched for Abauj  (Now Abauj-Torno-Zemplen administrative district.  MANDADB HU - Searching for Abauj

This is page 2 and we see  MAGYRORSZAG SZOMBATTARTO .....  Directory of Hungarian traders, tradesmen, and manufacturers keeping Sabbath.... It was published out of Budapest and contains many communities.

Click on it and the page is opening to a large view of the cover and more information such as the date of 1927 and that this booklet was put together by rabbis.

To the left under the larger image of the cover is a little icon that says DOCUMENT.  We click on that and it opens a PDF file showing the content.

Now this is the tricky part, if you can't read Hungarian, because it would be nice to cut and past text into the Google Translator...

However if you have Jewish Hungarian roots in Abauj you are probably focused on finding certain surnames or individuals.  You can probably take a screen shot or download the file for future use.

I find it interesting that such books were made.  The intention was so that members of a community who were traveling or wanted to make deals could find persons like themselves. 

There existed at the time a tradition of hiring a Christian person to come to the house on the Sabbath to do some of the essential work, so that the Jewish person could observe the Sabbath religiously by not doing work.  An example would be to light the hearth fire so that the house would stay warm.  Animals needed to be fed.  And so on. My understanding is that the Sabbath began at sundown on Friday and ended at sundown on Saturday. The women would prepare the food and do as much as possible to finish their work before Sundown.  Therefore, on Sunday, when the Christians had their Sabbath, the Jewish people could be back at work, having had a good rest.  A few years back I had neighbors who still observed this Sabbath.  He was a lawyer and she was a nurse; they considered it to be family time and study time.

As you see on this list, there are many surnames that most Americans think of as Jewish or German Jewish.  The history on this is that most Jews who came into Hungary came in from the North, Poland - Galicia, and there too they had surnames that appear to be German Jewish with some using Polish or Ukrainian surnames.  Some of them did change their surnames to be Hungarian or Hungarian translations in meaning.  On this list you see it is men and men who are using a Hungarian given name.  This is not the same as their "Jewish name."  It is a Civil name that one might coordinate with the Civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths.

When it come to the trades, there were Jewish people who changed their names to reflect their trade.  Therefore some trade names have both Christian and Jewish people with those names.  Schreiber- clerk. 

However, in 1927, post World War I and prior to Word War II and the Holocaust, there were thriving Jewish Communities in Hungary, and especially in "wine country,"  So a booklet like this is a between wars moment in time.

So let's page through.  We can do this by clicking on the individual page icons to the left.

I notice:

Csillag  Emanuel  - Hungarian surname meaning Star

Zipszer Edy :  Reference to the Germans of Szepes county called Zipszers.

Several surnames with Low : Reference to Lowe, now Lviv, Ukraine.

Page icon 7 : I note that a woman or two is being named.

titkar - secretary Piroska Fleishmann

társelnök - co-chair : Abelesz Emilne - the ne means "the wife of" Emil Abelsz

C 2022 Magyar American BlogSpot

JUST A QUIET PLACE - BEREGSURANY - THE GUARDIAN VIDEO

 A short documentary about the Hungarian border town Beregsurany, which is helping Ukrainian refugees who have fled the Russian attack on their country.  One man calls in sick to help.  Another makes 1000 pancakes a day. 

The question of migrants versus refugees... There is a difference in that migrants wish to settle...?

SACRED HEART

 

ACKNOWLEDGING THE PAIN AND SUFFERING CAUSED BY SENSELESS WAR - SHUT UP DONALD TRUMP

I've been listening to and watching news on UKRAINE and the invasion by Russia as well as, now, Belarus, feeling sick. I'm also totally disgusted with ex President Donald Trumps open mouthy admiration for Putin.  Even an ex-President can have personal opinions, but as I see it, this is treasonous behavior.  As a public figure who was our President, his inability to know what is appropriate is astounding. There is also a total lack of sensitivity to the fact that this is not a war in which an army faces and army but a brutal attack on innocent civilians. 

I'M LUCKY THAT I LIVE IIN A COUNTRY WHERE OPINIONS ARE DIVERSE AND I CAN EXPRESS MINE. I'm glad I can blog and say so.

WHAT CAN WE SAY ABOUT SPIRITS IN HUMAN  BODIES WHO ARE OPPORTUNISTS AND USERS, WHO WAIT FOR WEAKNESS TO PREY ON OTHERS?

We can recognize EVIL. 

It is very difficult to live in this world when we feel we cannot have impact to turn it right to good.

Life is complicated and difficult and we have to seek out beauty and goodness.

There is a song "Let there Be peace on earth and let it begin with me..."