Some industrial cities had reached their peak population before Americans moved to the suburbs.
Genealogists and historians will be able to take a closer look at the historical trends starting Friday when records for individual people are released from the 1950 census.
Researchers see the records as a goldmine, while amateur genealogists view it as a way for them to fill in gaps in their family trees. This field of research has experienced dramatic growth due to the popularity of DNA testing kits at home.
Matt Menashes, the executive director of National Genealogical Society, said that “This is genealogy heaven” when a census rolls out. “People are anxiously waiting. It is hard to overstate the importance of this.
Records identifying individuals by name cannot be made public for privacy reasons until 72 years after being gathered during the once-a decade U.S. headcount. The 1940 records were made public a decade ago.
Wendy Kalman, an Atlanta-based amateur genealogist, hopes that the 1950 records will provide her with more information about her grandparents, parents, and relatives. She has been able to trace her father’s family back to 18th-century Ukraine. Her research has also led her to contact previously unknown third and forth cousins in the U.S., with whom she speaks regularly.
Kalman, 55, said that it was an exciting journey to discover where you come from. The census records can help you uncover information that isn’t always readily available. The census records provide a snapshot of time and family stories don’t always get passed down. It allows you to put together a picture.
Ronnie Willis’ grandparents were both itinerant farmers, who traveled across Texas and Oklahoma in a mixed group during the 1930s and 1940s. After World War II, they became nuclear family units. Willis hopes that the 1950 census records will help him to piece together what happened with those relatives who settled elsewhere.
Willis, 53, who is a senior software company executive and lives in Greenville (South Carolina), said, “That will help me get 10 years closer to solving the puzzle, a bit.”
The records that were released by the National Archives and Records Administration (NAROSA) will be indexed and made searchable. These handwritten, digitally digitized forms include information about the household members, including their names, race, gender, address, occupations and marital status. Users will be able to correct any errors or add missing names to the website.
Claire Kluskens is a Digital Projects Archivist at the National Archives. She acknowledged that the website will launch Friday with a “first draft.” This means that specific people can only be found by searching for the household head.
Two outside genealogical organizations, FamilySearch and Ancestry , are collaborating to provide quality control on records by creating an index that is separate from the National Archives.
Ancestry will have scores of workers ready to go Friday at 12:01 AM EDT to begin downloading the more that 6.5 million digital images from the census files. Based in Utah, the company will scan millions of surveys and use artificial intelligence to decipher handwriting and convert the data into readable database forms.
Crista Cowan (corporate genealogist at Ancestry) said, “We are so excited about diving into the census.”
FamilySearch will coordinate the double-checking of the entries with the digital images. There are anywhere from 400,000 to 800,000. David Rencher, chief genealogist at FamilySearch and director of the Family History Library, Salt Lake City, will correct any entries that incorrectly identify Wilhelmina as the 1950 census form.
He said that the effort could take between six and nine months.
Rencher stated, “We believe that we will achieve better accuracy because humans are looking at it.”
New data will reveal the contours and possibilities of a completely new world.
The United States had only half the population of its 332 million inhabitants in 1950. The average household size was 3.5 people in 1950, while the 2019 average household size was 2.6. Only 9% of households had a single person living in them in 1950, as opposed to 28% in 2019. According to Marc Perry, a Senior Demographer at the Census Bureau, adults were more likely than ever to marry. In 1950, more than two-thirds (or more) of households had someone living alone, while 28% in 2019 was less.
Elaine Powell is thrilled because she is seeing herself in census records for the first time. The President of the Central Florida Genealogical Society was a native Floridian who grew up in St. Louis.
It’s exciting. Powell said that he can still hear Powell hollering and whooping in the library when Powell found my parents in the census the first time he had done so. It confirms what your grandparents and parents have told you.
It can also correct family lore. Powell said that genealogy is not based on documentation.
