How to find someone in the 1940 Census

I posted this on Facebook in April 2012, not long after the 1940 Census was released. I rediscovered this post in November 2020 and figured I'd post it here since it's not doing any good there.

The 1940 Census is out at http://1940census.archives.gov, released (as by law) 72 years after it was taken. Unfortunately it's not indexed by name yet, so if you want to find your relatives you have to know their address on April 1, 1940. I've found both of my dad's parents so far, one in New York and one in Bennington VT (my grandfather was 28 and my grandmother was 24, and both were living at home with their parents until they got married just 4 months later - amusing in retrospect). There's a bit of a learning curve til you get used to how they organize their data.

Four easy steps on finding people:

1. Use Google Maps to pinpoint the address to a specific block between streets. I found that 1349 Grant Ave in the Bronx is between 169th and 170th. It'll also show you what the property looks like today.

2. Use the "search by location" radio button and then "browse" tab. Enter the state, county, city, and street via pull-down menu (sometimes you can enter a nearby cross-street). Using Grant Ave as an example, there are 17 possible Enumeration Districts (EDs) that Grant runs through, so now we have to narrow it down.

3. Use the Descriptions option to read the pages that tell which streets and blocks are in which ED. Click the "View Description" link to get to the pages. In my case, I found it on the third set, one of the pages says that ED 3-210B includes the block bounded by 169th, Grant, 170th, and Sheridan.

4. Then it's just a matter of going to that ED (click on the 3-210B link) and then go to the "Census Schedules" link for that ED. You've got to look at every page of listings (10-40 pages) until you find them. I found that it's easier to download the whole set rather than look using their viewer, but that's my preference.

Once you find them, there's some interesting data, but not a whole lot. You can find out who was living there, their ages, where they were born (state or foreign country), how much education each had, what their jobs were, how many hours a week they worked there, and how much money they made in the last year.

New York City, 1979

The United Nations, Rockerfeller Plaza, and the view from Top of The Rock, summer 1979

 

New York City, 1965

In the summer of 1965, my parents spent some time in Manhattan around the time they went to the World's Fair. Among the places they took pictures at were the United Nations building and a boat ride out to the Statue of Liberty (also seen here in 1974 and 2006).

Statue of Liberty, 1974 & 2006

Living in New Jersey in the 1970s, we got to travel a lot in the Northeast, and from time to time we'd take in the sights of New York City. In summer 1974 we took the boat trip out to the Statue of Liberty, and of course my dad took a number of slides. He and I went up to the crown's observation deck (you can see the spike from the crown in the 6th row of pictures), while my sister and mother hung back. We took the typical family tourist pictures.

Flash forward to Sept. 2006, I took a trip to New York after my sister's wedding, and not having seen the Statue of Liberty since that 1974 trip, I went back and took my own pictures. What I didn't realize at the time was that views of the Statue are so iconic, I ended up taking many similar or nearly identical photos that my dad had taken. There had been some changes in the meantime, including remaking the field at Liberty's back into a paved walkway with a security tent, and of course the loss of the World Trade Center buildings on the Manhattan skyline. In 2006, the statue itself had not been reopened, and we were only allowed up to the top of the base, whereas in 1974 we could go up to the crown.

Here are side-by-side images of the Statue of Liberty 32 years apart (1974 on the left, 2006 on the right).

New York World's Fair, 1965

The 1964/1965 New York World's Fair opened on April 22, 1964, and ran for two six-month seasons concluding on October 17, 1965. These pictures were taken around August 1965. The fair was in Flushing Meadows, in Queens, NY, near Shea Stadium. Pictures here include General Motors' "Futurama", Sinclair Oil's "Dinoland", the Unisphere, a recreation of a Belgian village (which introduced the Belgian Waffle to the US), Disney's "It's a Small World", and General Electric's "Carousel of Progress" (both of which later moved to Disneyland).

More photos in my flickr set here.

New York City, 1908-1912

Wedding pictures of my paternal great-grandparents. All four came to the US from overseas, and both couples got married in New York City about 100 years ago.

World Trade Center, 1981

We took a day trip from New Jersey into New York City to see the World Trade Center in June 1981. Except for the first one, taken from ground level, the rest were taken from the Top of the World observation deck above the 107th floor of the South Tower. On the second image, you can just make out the signature of George Willig, who climbed the tower in 1977 (click to embiggen, signature is just to the left of the corner). The panorama at the end is of the North Tower (click to embiggen). The final picture is Lower Manhattan and the World Trade Center from the Empire State Building, taken a couple of weeks later.