Suburban genealogists eager for 1940 Census data
Millions of glimpses into a country emerging from the Great Depression and on the verge of entering World War II are about to be unveiled.
On Monday the National Archives and Records Administration will release the 1940 U.S. Census records in their entirety, offering a treasure trove of information to genealogists, researchers and anyone interested in preserving and perpetuating the stories of their ancestors.
"Everyone is very excited because this will help us to trace our families even better," said AnnEllen Barr, a 79-year-old Buffalo Grove resident and member of the Computer-Assisted Genealogy Group of Northern Illinois. "And for some of us who are old enough, it'll be the first time we'll find our own names."
To protect privacy, a federal law enacted in 1978 restricts personal information collected in the decennial census to anyone but that particular individual or heirs for 72 years.
Genealogists say Monday's highly anticipated release, observed by numerous websites counting down the hours to 8 a.m. Central Time, is especially exciting because it's the first census being released online. Plus, the website 1940census.archives.gov is free. Previous census releases were in microfilm format.
It will be some time before anyone can search records by name, however.
The records will be searchable only by the enumeration district in which someone lived, or the specific area each of the roughly 120,000 census takers was assigned to comb.
A massive volunteer effort led by findmypast.com, archives.com and FamilySearch is under way to digitally index the files. The project will likely take months, but the result will be much quicker and far easier searches.
Countless people can't wait to see what - or who - they'll find among the 132 million residents recorded living in 48 states.
Chicago Genealogical Society President Julie Benson, who works in St. Charles, said she'll first investigate where her father lived when he immigrated from Sweden in 1937. She knows it was somewhere on Chicago's West Side, so she'll start by tracking down his enumeration district and then pore over names.
"It could be a needle in a haystack situation, but problem solving and working with clues makes finding something so rewarding," Benson said.
Benson has managed to track four ancestral lines back more than 500 years, mostly thanks to church records in Sweden and Norway. She also uses tools including ancestry.com and genline.com and attends meetings of family historians who share her interest.
Like many past census forms, the 1940 questionnaire reflected the country's social, political and economic issues at the time, according to Scott Forsythe, an archivist with the National Archives at Chicago.
Several new questions not listed the decade before measured the reach of the New Deal, asking whether anyone in the household was involved in public emergency work projects conducted by the Works Progress Administration, National Youth Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps or other work relief agency.
People also were asked detailed wage information and the highest grade of school completed.
One question asked where household members lived in 1935 due to the government's interest in internal migration at the time. States including Kansas and Oklahoma lost a seat in Congress after the 1940 Census, the result of an exodus from the Great Plains during the Dust Bowl.
Five percent of the population answered 16 supplemental questions such as parents' birthday, military service and participation in two national insurance programs.
"You really get an idea about what was going on in the country in various ways," Forsythe said. "It was clear the government was thinking about the effects of the Great Depression."
Buffalo Grove's Barr agreed the differences in each census form are telling of the times. She found newspaper advertisements for radios that cost hundreds of dollars in the 1920s, and then saw the 1930 census asked whether people owned the consumer item.
In 1920, it was the first time there wasn't a separate census for American Indians. And due to some boundary changes after World War I, enumerators were instructed to ask the specific province or city a person's parents had been born in Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia or Turkey.
Michelle Bray Wilson of Long Grove, president of the Computer-Assisted Genealogy Group of Northern Illinois, said she's looking forward to tracking down one of her dad's aunts who lived in Detroit. She couldn't locate her in the 1930 Census and wonders whether she had any children Wilson may be able to contact.
"By the time you reach your 40s and 50s, your family tree gets pretty broad," Wilson said. "This is a chance to try and re-form those ties."
Future generations probably won't find the census quite so interesting. The information to be released in 2082 will only reveal the 10 questions asked in 2010, compared to 65 questions in 1940. Census forms have become less detailed as data collection advances.
Wilson and others say that's a shame, and wish some people weren't so reluctant to disclose their information to census workers. She compares the loss to a fire that destroyed all the original 1890 census documents.
"We grieve for that lost decade, and I know that 100 years from now our descendants will be so disappointed if they run into 'non-divulgers,'" Wilson said. "It's information that will be lost to the myths of time."
Census: Differences in each form are telling of the times
Area genealogical societies
• Chicago Genealogical Society:
chicagogenealogy.org• North Suburban Genealogical Society:
nsgsil.org• Northwest Suburban Council of Genealogists:
nwscg.com• Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois:
jewishgen.org• DuPage County Genealogical Society:
dcgs.org• Computer Assisted Genealogical Group of Northern Illinois:
caggni.org• Kane County Genealogical Society:
rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ilkcgs/• Lake County Genealogical Society:
rootsweb.ancestry.com/~illcgs• McHenry County Illinois Genealogical Society:
mcigs.org• Elgin Genealogical Society:
elginroots.com• Fox Valley Genealogical Society:
Genealogy websites*
worldgenweb.org*Free