TRYING THE 1950 CENSUS SEARCH ON ANCESTRY TM GENEALOGY - SOME SUCCESS SOME FAILURE

I've been trying the Ancestry TM genealogy databases once a week to see what progress that big database company is making on indexing the 1950 census, which came out on the NARA web site on April first.  (Disclosure:  The title of this blog is not in reference to that site.  Ancestry TM is one of many databases that I use.)

Having found some, but not all of the people I sought to find, I kept trying Ancestry TM to see what, if anything, would come up that I had not found on the NARA web site.  Yesterday I was pleased to have brought up one of the people who I sought, and indeed the surname was spelled incorrectly enough that I might have played games with it a dozen or more different ways in hopes of finding it. So in this case, Ancestry's implied soundex did make a difference.

Interestingly, however,  the person's son,  living independently, who I did find on a NARA exploration, did not come up on Ancestry, though I spelled that surname the same way as it had come up on NARA. And he was living in the same town, not far away. 

A further surprise was that a relative of mine was counted TWICE, at two different locations in the same small town, listed as a 'lodger.'  In one it says she is 24, in the other that she is 30.  The 24 is closer to the mark, making me think that the family where she is listed as 30 years old might have talked to the census taker rather than the census taker talking to her.  Had she been in the process of moving?  Neither family is related to her, so ???

Ancestry TM is suggesting that you send them your e-mail address in order to be informed about the 1950 census.  I simply looked at the numbers and saw that about one and a half million had been indexed. About 151 million people were counted that  1950 census and no doubt about it, there must be many people working on it. So, I think I must have just been lucky enough to have been searching for a surname that comes up within the count.

Another surprise was learning that a person who I knew to have been divorced three times had two more children with the third, brief, husband. They were born after the 1940, and I know the husband was living in a boarding house that year.  I do wonder what the arrangement was.  This woman had a very hard life.  Her age is a little off on the 1950, and it says she was born in the United States, though I have her coming into New York Harbor in her mother's arms, and thus believe she was born in Europe.  Did she perhaps not know where she was born?  Since I cannot find any baptismal for her in Europe but also cannot find any baptismal for her two siblings who were born in the United States, I wonder...

The other pleasure was finding two individuals who had middle initials listed.  I had been told that the M for one stood for Mary, and that is was an honorific for her mother.  That has pretty much been proven.  However, it was only a childhood memory - I must have been ten years old -  when I asked an adult what the middle name of the man was.  I was told Peter and that makes sense of the P.

I'll be reporting on 1950 census progress again.

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