ROOTS & BRANCHES

Under current law, U.S. Census returns are released 72 years after they are taken.

That makes April 1, 2022, a key date for genealogists because it’s when the 1950 enumerations will be available to the public.

When I began my genealogy in the mid-1980s, the 1910 census was that latest one released.

I was still a hobbyist in 1992 when 1920 came out and while I’m sure there was some fanfare, I wasn’t a part of it. By that point in my genealogy life I was mostly either looking for 1700s German immigrants or probing further into generations in Europe. Twentieth-century family history wasn’t really on my radar screen.

In 2002, however, I was executive director of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania and the regional National Archives in Philadelphia held a ceremony about the 1930 census release, giving me a chance to be one of several people to “cut the ribbon” and then run to microfilms to find discoveries in the newly available films.

I was excited this time around since it was the first census in which my parents were enumerated. My mother was still alive at the time of the release, so I was able to report to her that I was looking at the record of her as a child of just 2 years old.

By 2012 when the 1940 census went live, technology advanced to the point that the release was made digitally, on a website that promptly crashed because the excitement generated so many users right away.

It took just months for the 1940 returns to be indexed by a volunteer consortium led in large part by FamilySearch.org, and at a virtual get-together for genealogists held earlier this month, FamilySearch revealed plans related to next year’s release of 1950.

Once again, it’s somewhat astounding how much technology has leapfrogged. Because FamilySearch has been working at handwriting-recognition technology, it will be able to put up a census index based on that software in short order and will deploy its volunteer base to then go through and correct deficiencies of the machine-read version of the index.

More information on FamilySearch’s plans can be found at the URL, FamilySearch.org/1950Census

All of this makes me wonder what releases of the 1960 and 1970 censuses will look like. If I live that long, 1970 will be the first time I’ll be able to see myself, since I missed 1960 by just a couple of months.

In the meantime, I’ll have to content myself with looking at my parents, presumably in their separate households but on the cusp of marriage (they would tie the knot in 1952).