SUBURBAN BUILDING ON THE 1950 CENSUS - USING ED MAPS - HOUSE LOTS AND VACANCIES - FARM LAND SOLD TO DEVELOPERS

I've mentioned how the suburbs were being built in the 1950's.  Using ENUMERATION DISTRICT MAPS can be interesting.

Usually there were people living rural in the area before the suburbs sprung up.  Farmers sold their land to developers as they do now.  Just for fun, I decided to see what was happening in a particular part of Pennsylvania near a big city, knowing that as of 1960 people there were still getting their mail via "rural route."

I used the State and County, then read ED descriptions to focus on an unincorporated area, and noticed that the farms were there, as were some named streets and also some HOUSE LOTS by number.  

From historical maps elsewhere I know some of the farmer's surnames.  They are mostly German heritage Americans.  There are also Scottish surnames represented.  Some of the surnames are also possibly Jewish though the given names are not obviously so.

Looking over the maps, I was surprised to find that there were smaller farm lots (the 40 acres and a mule lots) that also had Germanic surnames that come up in high school yearbooks in the 1970's; a few of the families that were in this area way back stayed in place for 3-4 generations. (Sixty to a hundred years.) Most of the surnames in the 1970's yearbook that are represented on the 1950 census lead me to the grandparents of the students and some parents; the students are not born yet.  (I may be seeing some older siblings in some cases.)

The HOUSE LOTS indicate that there is some plan for building in place in 1950 and each is numbered. The named and planned streets extend out to the farm land and the particular map teamed with the ED district does not show HOUSE LOTS on these streets.

The HOUSE LOTS seem to relate to an area of the census where there are no named streets.

And I am seeing VACANCIES indicating that a new house has been built but has not been sold yet, rather than an old house has been abandoned.

Now, I do not think the names of many of these streets remained what it says on the map for 1950. I notice that some of the streets ended up being called road or lane. 

Street

Lane

Road

Way

Drive

Boulevard

Highway

ARE THESE DESCRIPTIVE?  Drive almost sounds scenic and, I think, comes after automobiles.

The whole place has a township name that is no longer in use as well as a town name that is no longer in use.

The long roads that had the names of early settlers or early farmer's surnames still have these names.  These are the sometimes winding and miles long roads that and were probably used historically to travel between farms because they were fairly straight and level passages. through hilly regions.  Houses had been built near these roads for easy access to them.

I'm not finding that a Smith lives on Smith road in 1950, so likely they purchased houses that were being built in the 1930's and 1940's.  One of the larger land owners has several families who've gone to live off the original farm land but build or bought nearby.

I look at the ED district's front page which is where the total population count is placed.  There are about 5000 people in 1950.  I know that by the 1970's it's more like 20,000.

I see what the people who are living near each other are doing for a living.  I find an area of ghettoized Blacks who all do physical labor for the coal mine nearby. But there are some White people living near and on these streets as well, who also do this physical labor.

Have a look at some place where ancestors of yours lived !

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