The 1950 US Census has Arrived! What Have We Found?
Stories Behind the Records
Editor's note: this week's blog contains stories of searches in the 1950 census. What is your story? Submit to m.strickland@skcgs.org
Finding my parents in the 1950 Census
I thought I was ready for release day. I had my parent’s address from 1949 in the Billings, MT, City Directory – 301 S. 32nd St. But when I searched that Enumeration District, the name didn’t show up. So I widened the area to Billings and put in his name again (Naylor). Now something came up – Maylor Thomas K. So clicking on that name took me to the Census page in a different ED and on that name I found my parents, Thomas K. Naylor and Merle R. Naylor. I was there too, but again a mistake. This mistake was in the first letter of my name. The census taker spelled it Sheri instead of Cheri. I was 2 years old. The address was 132-l/2 Terry Avenue. I remember the place through photographs but didn’t know the exact address. It was the back half of an older house. A good friend of the family lived next door – Stan Krivec and his wife. It was fun to see they went that far back as friends. Now I’ll be sure to go see the house when I’m back in Billings this summer. There will be more searches to come, but this was at the top of my list.
Cheri Sayer
When your father has a common name
My parents were not at the address I expected, in fact the development wasn't built yet by the looks of it. I knew my parents had been living in Schenectady, NY (my brother was born there in 1958), and I had a directory address in 1951, but they weren't there (Batavia, NY). I knew my dad had started working in Batavia sometime between those two dates, but didn't know exactly when. I remembered one of my parents mentioning that they had an apartment in South Byron, near Batavia, but that didn't pan out. So finally I went back to the NARA indexes for the Batavia area in Genesee County. My dad's name is David Davis, and you can imaging that there were plenty of Davids and Davis's to sort through. I finally saw a "Davis Dav" partially indexed and gave it a try. Lo and behold it was my dad, mom and brother on page 74, crossed out. I think maybe they had just moved into an apartment on or after the first, so they got indexed, and then crossed out because they weren't actually there on the first. Whatever the reason, I got the information even though it was crossed out, and the bonus was, my mom was on the last sample line of the page, and so she answered all 36 questions!
Cyndi Davis
Not Home
In the first few hours the 1950 US Census was available, I found my grandparents Thomas Cowan and Else Schell Cowan [1] and to my surprise, my great-uncle Emery with his son Bill, and his mother, my great-grandmother Selma Christine Andersdotter Schell, living not at all where I thought they would be, but instead a few houses away from my grandparents.[2]
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| My grandparents Thomas Cowan and Elsie Schell Cowan in 1950 |
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| Great-uncle Emery, his son William, and mother Selma Christine Andersdotter Schell |
I think there is a story there, because Emery and Bill his son were living in Seattle in 1947, but by 1949, he's described as living in Fall City with Selma and Bill. This is why it was a surprise to see them close to my grandparents, rather than 10 miles away. Part of the context of this story is that my uncle Donald, age 12, had drowned in 1949, the previous summer. I think they moved closer to my grandmother Elsie to support her in her grief.
Also a few houses away, I found my parents Not Home!! But the neighbors across the street were home, so I knew I had the correct ED & location. My father's name "Ted" was crossed out, and there was a note: not home - sheet 73, lines 17 to 19.[3] This fooled me, because NARA did not number the sheets in the 70s, but by looking at the sheet numbers in the upper-right corner at the end of the ED, I found sheet 73, which was enumerated April 24, about 2 weeks after they were "not home." As expected, my mother Lola McBee Cowan was working as a telephone operator, and my father was working as a clerk at Seattle Hardware, which was owned by his uncle. [4]
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| "No one home" next to the Risdon and Kaszuba families in the 1950 Census |
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| Theodore and Lola McBee Cowan in the 1950 Census - end of the ED |
Reading a whole Enumeration District
It is not difficult to read a whole ED. Most have fewer than 20 pages, and in cases like finding my parents, it is necessary.
The trick to going through the entire ED page by page is to put in only the state and ED number here: https://1950census.archives.gov/search/.
Also it is worthwhile to search by just a first name; I found my grandparents by searching for "elsie" and I found my neighbors the Risdons by searching for risdon. This will not work so well for Jane Smith.
Finding the Enumeration District (ED)
But how to find the ED# in the first place so you can search it? There are a couple of places you can check, but first look at the timeline of the person you are searching, to find out where they might have been living in 1950. As you can see by the example of my uncle Emery above, this is not an exact science!
I suggest first heading to Steve Morse's excellent website and his ED Finder. There you simply put in the address and keep adding surrounding streets until you pare down the number of matching EDs to one or two. An alternative is Ancestry's 1950 District Finder (beta) at https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/district-map/62308. I like their map overlays, but some people have gotten incorrect results from this tool.
It was well worth the time to dig out the EDs and find the images of my close family very early. It has been fulfilling to help in the indexing effort at https://www.familysearch.org/getinvolved/1950 and I hope you will do both!
1. 1950 U.S. Census, King County, Washington, population schedule, ED 17-21, p. 7 (penned), lines 17-19, family 61, Thomas Cowan [household]; image, United States National Archives (https://1950census.archives.gov/ : accessed 31 March 2022)
Valorie Cowan Zimmerman
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