The 1950 census will be released April 1.
The census was sequestered by law for 72 years. If you were born after April 1, 1950, as was my sister, you will not appear. It will be the first census that I appear in.
You can view the census for free at a number of websites, including archives.gov, Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. There isn’t currently a complete index, but the National Archives (NARA) has posted a name and location index on a separate website.
To learn more, go to archives.gov/news/articles/1950-census-access, as well as archives.gov/research/census/1950 for various webinars about the index. Other groups have begun creating their own index, including Ancestry.com.
In the meantime, in order to find your family members, you need to know where they were living in 1950. Then, if you use Stephen Morse’s guide to the enumeration districts at stevemorse.org, you will know where to start looking. Search for the state, the county and then the district and browse until you find the street and your family.
There are various sites where information about the 1950 census is available, so search online. One place is Thomas MacEntee’s genealogybargains.com.
Census indexing efforts
Various national and local groups are participating in helping further index the 1950 census. FamilySearch.org and the National Genealogical Society, working together, are the lead groups and are inviting local societies to participate. The Cobb County Genealogical Society has signed on. Contact the society at at ccgs@Cobbgagensoc.org for details.
Who were the census takers?
If you were ever a census taker, let us know. One of my relatives, William F. Brooks, was the Cobb County census taker in 1850.
Contact Kenneth H. Thomas Jr., P.O. Box 901, Decatur, Ga., 30031 or at www.kenthomasongenealogy.com.
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