No April Fool's Joke Here - The 1950 U.S. Census was Released Today!

 It's like a birthday and Christmas all rolled into one day for genealogists in the United States (or anyone in the world who had family in the U.S. at that time)!  Census release day only comes along every 10 years so it is a BIG DEAL.

There is a 72 year restriction on access to census records.  So the latest available is now 1950.  It can be accessed for free through a dedicated website at 1950census.archives.gov. This census was the 17th census of the United States.  Taken every 10 years since 1790, the U.S. Census provides a snapshot of the nation's population. The questions on the census evolve each time to reflect the current social norms or changes in the world.  For example on several of the first censuses taken, only the "head" of the household was listed, this most often being a man.  Women and children were just numbers under age categories.  I read that the 1950 census asked whether the household had a TV (though I have yet to find that question myself!!).  

Now most of my genealogy friends and acquaintances stayed up until midnight and later this morning to see the 1950 census first thing.  I did not, for a couple of reasons.  First of all, I needed to go to bed to be able to go to work this morning.  And secondly, it is hard to search the census when it first comes out.  It does not come out of the chute already indexed so you can search by name.  Now this census is the first one that was digitized, and it is the first time that artificial intelligence/optical character recognition (AI/OCR) technology will be used.  However, that is not perfect.  Handwriting can be difficult to decipher, for both humans and machines.  So you must locate the proper Enumeration District where your family member(s) lived in 1950.    I was feeling a little left out and jealous of my friends, so I decided to do a little peek tonight.  I really didn't think I would find much.  I chose to do my searching on Ancestry.com, and it was not easy, let me tell you.  The map was difficult to navigate, but I got lucky.

I decided to start with Jacksonville, Florida.  I was pretty positive that my father was living there then.  I know with certainly that my Uncle Russ Tapley was living in Jacksonville, and I remembered he lived on 3rd Avenue.  Fortunately, I know my way around that part of Jacksonville pretty well, so I was able to pull up the map on Ancestry and find the area of town (Riverview) where 3rd Avenue was located.  That map is tricky, but I figured out my uncle probably lived in Enumeration District 16-11. 

Then I went to the actual images of the count.  There were 37 pages for that Enumeration District.  I scrolled through the first few pages, looked at the street names, and I knew I was close.  On page 17, I found 3rd Avenue!  I went to page 18, and there was my father with his first wife and their two children, my brother and sister!  I had no idea they lived on the same street as Uncle Russ!

My father, Gilbert E Tapley, age 22, married, from Georgia and a carpenter, along with his wife, Margaret E. Tapley, age 22, from North Carolina who was a homemaker, and their children, Harry E. Tapley, age 3, and Patricia E. Tapley, newly born September 1949, both born in Florida.  They lived at 2351 3rd Avenue.  

As you can see, my sister, Patricia (Pat) ended up on line #16, a sample line.  Unfortunately, that didn't add any new and interesting information since she was only 6 months old!

This looks to be the family at about the right time frame.

Full page image

Well, where was Uncle Russ then?  I went back to page 17 and there he was!  Along with his wife and his mother (my grandmother, Nealie Drake Tapley)!

My uncle, John R. Tapley, age 32, married, from Georgia, and a carpenter.  His wife, Elizabeth E. Tapley, age 27, from Florida and a homemaker, and his mother, Nealie V. Tapley, age 55, from Georgia. They lived at 2344 3rd Avenue.

I don't know if this was 1950, but Uncle Russ and Aunt Elizabeth had a TV!

I may try to find my mother on the census another day.  She was living in California, and I am not familiar with the area.  I will have to find the address where she was living, and really study some maps to find it and thus the Enumeration District!  Otherwise, I will just wait for the indexing to be complete.  It will still be new and exciting for me then.  

At least I got in on the fun today!