1950 CENSUS : SECOND TRY : ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE INDEX : THE GREATEST GENERATION LEAVING URBAN AREAS FOR THE SUBURBS

I've just gone into my previous posts about the SPECIAL BABY CENSUS and the SPECIAL NATIVE AMERICAN CENSUS and added some updates... You can easily find those in the posts below.

****** 

Between the 1940 and the 1950 great numbers of people left urban environments and ghettoized ethnic living and so it is more likely that on this 1950 you will have to look for changes in address and possibly a different Enumeration District than on the 1940. So, though you may find the ED district for the 1950 is simply numbered differently from the 1940, and that ancestors are living in the same house or neighborhood, you may not, and be dependent on finding them via indexing.

To sample, I looked into the census for MICHIGAN, Wayne County, in the Detroit and Dearborn eras.  I didn't like it when I found so very many of hits were first names. This was frustrating because I was searching for a surname which is sometimes a given name. Dozens of pages came up. I was not able to find the people I was seeking. The question is, will I wait until INDEXING PROJECTS do a better job of  indexing than the artificial intelligence? What if this family were not counted? I suppose it is a matter of having time.

The Motor City, as Detroit was called, had been the scene of industrial age employment for recent immigrants in earlier years, many of whom were able to purchase houses. This was considered good employment and did not require academic education.; for many workers the goal was to send their children to college. (Employment in the auto manufacturing industry was viable for decades, until Americans started buying Japanese.) It was also a place where with this type of employment, one could buy a home. There was a vast expansion of housing - single family homes - after World War II  also because veterans could acquire low interest home loans on the GI bill. 

The eye is drawn to the BOLDED HITS.  If you look a little closer you will see that there ARE surnames listed, and what follows are the first/given names of the people living in the house who are under that surname.  So SMITH, John is the head of household, and Catherine, Marie, and John Jr. are the wife and children.  If you happen to be looking for someone with the surname John or the like, you may have quite a bit to look through. Still, taking this into consideration, I was not able to find the people I was looking for.

I want to find these people, although they are not my direct genetic bloodline, because they are still related to me. They are relations because they are descended from my parent's siblings. Though I would not include them on charts of direct descent to me, the are directly descended from the same immigrants and properly belong on charts from that point.

C 2022 Ancestry Worship Genealogy

CENSUS WORKERS for the 2020 CENSUS

I got a call from a friend, asking me if I was going to apply to be a census worker for the 2020 census or volunteer for the 1950 census project. These projects are going to be a HUGE endeavor, the 2020 many times more HUGE than the 2010.  The population expanded rapidly. It was the post World War II baby boom. Suburbs were being built and Americans were expanding out from living in cities. GI's were using the low interest mortgage rates for veterans to be home owners.  Stay at home moms were financially possible. Some of us are going to read this 1950 census in 2020 (or thereafter) and just wish we were living back in the day.

Genealogists get very excited about census and census is called "The backbone of American genealogy."

I have such memories of the 2010 reveal. The NATIONAL ARCHIVES SITE was not functioning completely or well for a while as people rushed to use it. Of course other database owners attempted to have theirs up better and faster.  Indexing lagged behind. Some pages were missing or out of order. I used the National Archives site at a few libraries including my local LDS Family History Center to get in there with my list of people who had not appeared on 1940.

These mix ups and frustrations one also experienced when the Ellis Island ship manifests site first went up.  I remember finding ways to get what I needed, ways to mine the data.  

I spent hours reading 1940 census pages one after another because they were not indexed yet with mixed results. I still wish I were turning microfilm rather than clicking the mouse till I need a forefinger joint replacement. 

I've learned a bit about the data on census and why looking at the name of the census taker can be a good thing. For instance I noticed German surnames of census takers associated with assignments of going into Polish and Hungarian neighborhoods. The language the census taker speaks may reflect the spelling of the surnames.

So pre-2010 of course I applied to be a census worker.  I took a class and the test and got an A.  Soon I got a call asking if I speak Spanish.  I do not.  I didn't get the job.  They wanted people to be in their own neighborhoods and mine at the time probably had a significant percentage of Spanish speakers. I met the man who did get the job.  He was frustrated.  He said that he had to go back to a building three times because he was having trouble being let in. People were not answering their doors. After three tries his supervisor would go with him and then would make the building manager let them in. Overall they thought they were encountering illegal residents who did not want to be on census or talk to anyone governmental. Probably true.

So I suspect in our political climate (i.e "Build the Wall") that the 2020 census next year will be fraught with such issues.  WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF CENSUS.  It's a statistical analysis that helps our government understand the population and these statistics are often cited when our officials are looking for causes or funding.

Although I do not believe in the past the census information was shared with the INS (or equivalent) people who are not citizens may worry.

Think of the past census, say taken of those Ellis Island immigrants in which census takers asked people if they were citizens, if they were aliens, if they were in process, and what year they were naturalized.  There is a historical precedent for asking residents about their immigration status. Sometimes when I cannot find people who left a ship on a census I wonder if they hid out for the same reasons as the people do in recent history.

C 2019  All Rights Reserved  including Internet and International Rights.  This post has been edited and expanded July 2019