Some thoughts on the 1940 Census launch

Fortunately I didn't spend much time dealing with the 1940 census on launch day. The site was bogged down and I'm sure many people found it difficult to find anything. I was able to find the first few on my list mainly because they were all in the same enumeration district in rural Calhoun County, Iowa. I knew I was looking for Lake Creek Township and the census map told me that it was enumeration district 13-19. Since the site was severely bogged down, I simply downloaded all 16 pages of the district to my computer and looked through them manually. At this point the site has been so slow that you may as well look for the map and go straight to download rather than "quickview". I've yet to see a map or sheet in the flash viewer the way they had intended them to be viewed.

I've uploaded one in case you haven't seen a census sheet from 1940 yet:

Lake Creek Township, Calhoun County, Iowa, Page 5B (E.D. 13-19)

The image above contains the Harold Whitted residence and lists his wife Helen (Ross) Whitted as his wife. Also living at this residence, according to the census, was his mother-in-law Mary (Stotler) Ross and her son Oliver Ross. The document also contains two spots for supplementary information and as a matter of luck, Harold Whitted is in block 68, so there is some supplementary information about him. Mary (Stotler) Ross is my 2nd Great Grandmother. Not really expecting to see any ground breaking information, but Oliver apparently was visiting from Sioux City. (at the time of the census at least) If you click the image above you should be able to take a closer look at it.

Of the 16 sheets in the Lake Creek township, I found 3 more sheets that had relatives including the Clara and Frank Fowlie family, the Mason and Daisy Ross family and the John Ross Jr. family. I'm expecting to find Floyd Brassfield in Lake City, but I don't have the patience to wait for the website.

Today is 1940 Census Day

Posting has been pretty slow lately. I guess I have been letting other hobbies take priority over genealogy. At 9 AM Eastern on April 2, the 1940 Census will be released. I'm not sure what to expect from this data, but it should help to narrow down where some of my ancestors were living in 1940. It should also help narrow down death dates for a few of the people in my database that I don't have death dates for. 

There won't be a searchable list of names at first, so I'll probably start by flipping through the sheets for Calhoun County, Iowa and Marquette County, Wisconsin.

http://1940census.archives.gov/