Puzzles of the Past

Puzzles of the Past: A genealogy blog by Judith Beaman Scott. A place to share my love of genealogy and history, tell some family stories before they’re forgotten, and just maybe, find some new ones. I’ll use these pages to share information about my Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia families and discuss methods to solve some genealogical puzzles. Along the way I’ll include discussions of current issues and practices in the field of genealogy.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Coming Soon: 1940 U.S. census

On April 2, 2012, digital images of the 1940 U.S. census will be available, for free, at http://1940census.archives.gov. There are no indexes as yet; that will come later. But there are ways to access the pages for the people you want to find and you can prepare now.

The NARA website has lots of good census information and suggestions to prepare for the arrival of the census. Without an index you need to know the address and enumeration district (ED) of the families you want to find. If you don’t know the address you might look in city directories, the 1930 census, or other records available to you that would have an address. You can find enumeration maps at http://www.archives.gov/research/census/1940/finding-aids.html#mapsor.