Started in 1790 by then-Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, the census has a goal of counting every resident of the country. The United States had a population of about 132 million in 1940.
"The census is a wonderful tool for tracing your family history or doing any kind of historical research," said Elissa Scalise Powell of Marshall, a director of the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh and one of six certified genealogists in Pennsylvania.
"Nineteen-forty, of course, is a booming time in our country. You've got the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and the war effort coming on."
Questions in the 1940 census "reflect the changes that occurred within people's lives and family structure within that 10-year period," said Luanne Eisler, a genealogist at the Butler Area Public Library.
For example, the government's 140,000 enumerators went door-to-door asking where residents lived in 1935 because so many people moved between 1930 and 1940. They asked how many weeks the head of the household was employed during the previous year because of widespread unemployment.
Those questions were asked in addition to typical census queries about names, dates, places of birth, and whether people owned or rented their homes.
"When the government releases information, it's a big deal," said Susan Boyko, a genealogist in Jeannette. "This is bigger than that. This is once-in-a-decade."
The 1940 census will be the first one the National Archives and Records Administration releases digitally. However, the 3.8 million raw images of census forms won't be indexed upon the release, so researchers will have to look up geographic areas and search addresses, rather than searching by keywords. Most public libraries will make the census available.
Spokesmen for the nation's two largest genealogy resources, www.Ancestry.com and Heritage Quest, said the services plan to index the census by the end of the year.
The Athens Family History Center will have this census available for you to see without charge this April. Come visit and see what else the center has to offer.
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