1950 CENSUS FINDER - MORSE AND WEINTRAUB : HUNGARIAN-AMERICAN GENEALOGY

STEVE MORSE ORG 1950 CENSUS UNIFIED FINDER 

Of course, this census finder may help anyone of any ethnic or racial identity searching for ancestors who might appear on the United States 1950 Federal census, but those of you who come to MAGYAR-AMERICAN for genealogy, may find this especially helpful.

The 1950 census as it appears on the National Archives site is simply not easy to navigate and yes, in some places the handwriting isn't great so the spellings are not correct. The NARA site used artificial intelligence to interpret the handwritten! Trying to figure our just how a surname is misspelled can be a waste of time and make you feel crazy! 

(I will include this link on my sidebar that is simply full of wonderful links!)

HERE IS THE LINK TO THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE UNITED STATES 1950 CENSUS START PAGE : https://1950census.archives.gov/

TESTING THE 1950 CENSUS AT THE NARA WEBSITE ; FAMILY SEARCH and ANCESTRY GENEALOGY DATABASES WILL CATCH UP

I've been testing the United States 1950 census at the NATIONAL ARCHIVES WEBSITE.  Yesterday I also went to FamilySearch and to Ancestry TM to see what is happening with the 1950 census there.

1950 CENSUS NARA SEARCH LINK

The NARA site activated at one in the morning on April 1st.  During Covid closures the employees of the National Archives were busy working on this census to meet the commitment to release it on that date.  Artificial Intelligence was used to 'read' the handwriting and come up with a searchable text. As is the case with FamilySearch and Ancestry, users are allowed to tweak the database- - for better or worse.  A huge amount of trust in the good will and best efforts of the public are expected.  Both companies as well as the National Archives have put a shout out for volunteers.

I came up with a list of the most important people I wanted to find on the 1950.  The NARA database allows you to search by first/given name, last/surname, both, and to also enter an ED district.  You may also put in a STATE, COUNTY, and/or CITY, which narrows the search a bit more.

Of about 20 names I sought, the most important did come right up.  I guess that's a blessing.

However from that point on I was searching for people who were either not counted or who otherwise will require a longer period of time to find.  You see, I'm moving forward in time, looking for those who descended from a branch of my Hungarian immigrant family who may have married, joined the service during World War II, and settled outside the ethnic enclave that they lived in for a generation or maybe two as part of that expansion to suburbs as well as post-service immigration within the United States.  I have no way of knowing if they will be in the same state and some of the surname just bring up so many people.

Eventually FamilySearch and Ancestry - as well as some other genealogy databases - will catch up in their efforts to index.  What will make it all easier on us is that these databases will allow us to further narrow by allowing us to imput a date of birth.

An example from my own research is a distant relative named Katherine or Catherine or Kay, as she was called. As of 1940, she had been diagnosed with TB and had no say in being put into a TB Hospital.  I have never found her on the 1940 and I don't know if that is because she was not counted, or if she was put in a hospital outside the city and state where she lived until that diagnosis or if perhaps her surname was misspelled. Over the years I've periodically rechecked research.

 I know that she was alive in 1950, and that she died not long after that, of the flu complicated by the TB which had been resolved, but which had caused considerable damage to her lungs.  When her surname did not bring her up on the NARA site, I decided to see how many hits it would bring up If I simply put her first name and the state.... many thousands.

Importantly, I found the family that she lived with at some point when she was well enough to leave the hospital, and she was not there. 

The 1950 Census has some special features that the others do not, and you can check the site to learn about the Native American (Indian) census, how college students away from home were counted, and about the census of Guam and Panama.

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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!

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1940 UNITED STATES CENSUS ON LINE TODAY! LINK TO DIGITALIZED IMAGES HERE!

This is so exciting to those of us who are tracing our ancestry with roots in Hungary!

A majority of Hungarian-Americans today can trace to the immigrations of the Industrial Revolution. We find ancestors on US census (and some state census) in 1890, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, and now 1940. They have lived through the Great Depression and are will be involved in World War II. These other census are not available as digitalized images at the National Archives site, which is accessible anywhere there is an Internet Computer.