UPDATE APRIL 2012 by Ancestry Worship Genealogy
I've provided links to the National Archives 1940 information and to the ED converter utility to the left sidebar - top of this blog. I attended a lecture by Steve Morse at Latter Day Saints Family History Library in Los Angeles recently. It was a fun lecture, tracing the addresses of famous cartoon characters such as Donald Duck.
If you will go to this ED converter site and follow the links you will find the names of volunteers who have transcribed ED districts and the various cities, large and small, in the United States that are already done. You'll see what needs to be done.
I've spend the last week getting into these sites and using them, or trying to. I'm one of the millions who crashed the National Archives site last Monday within hours after the grand opening. What has happened is that a third party contractor has been hired to provide additional servers for the traffic. As a result the images are not showing as was planned. The original idea was to get to a ED and see a row of small page icons to click one after another. As the site is functioning at this time, you will click page by page. (Try using the ZOOM function on your computer to reduce these to cut on how much mouse you have to use.)
I had 1930 addresses as well as 1940ish addresses for seven families which I used the converter on. Sadly, not one of these addresses was wrong, but the ED districts that the addresses brought up on the converter were not right. In one case one ED district was brought up but I read seven ED's till I found the family. In two other cases the ED converter did not reduce the number of films much because the street name ran through a few districts, meaning that the street is being read but probably not the house number. YES USING THE MAP and introducing the cross street names narrowed it some, but not much!
PLEASE NOTE THAT IN ABOUT A WEEK I'LL BE POSTING ON ALTERNATIVES FOR FINDING ANCESTORS ON THE 1940.
OLDER POSTS BELOW:
STEVE MORSE has announced a 1940 CENSUS transcription project which you may wish to join.
Let me tell you this... Morse has been an innovator in helping us get into and around the ELLIS ISLAND database. I heard him speak a few years ago and he's probably a genius with a few cohorts who are genius's too. More than anything this is going to take a lot of work and cooperation!
You may already know that we cannot legally see the 1940 until April 1, 2012 but that doesn't mean it will be TRANSCRIBED... and because of the burgeoning population counted yes I AM saying it could be 2015 before you can use it... unless of course you are part of a project in which your transcription work makes your towns of interest available to other genealogists!check this out NOW!
PS : JUST HEARD FROM STEVE (and PARTNER JOEL) HIMSELF! READ STEVE'S COMMENT BELOW!
(The project is not per surname!)
