The 1950 Census Data Is Up and Searchable - How-To Information

[MineralMan]

Last edited Sun Apr 3, 2022, 01:05 PM - Edit history (1)

All of the individual data sheets enumerated by census takers are now online and searchable. Here's the link to the main page of the 1950 Census:

https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1950

There's a link near the top of that page that leads you to the search tool.

It's somewhat confusing to use. It is not the most user-friendly search engine. I've spent a couple of hours on it, and have found my own data, along with my parents. I was 5 years old. i also found the data for my wife's grandparents in South Dakota. Once you get to the search tool, here's a guide to finding what you're looking for. Use the following steps to save some time:

1. On the left, select the state from the drop down list.

2. Select the county to search. You can't select a city.

3. Below those, type in at least the last name, but better a first and last name for the person you're looking for. It's easier if you use the head of household for your search.

4. Click the magnifying glass icon to begin your search, using the one next to the name box.

You'll see a results page. It will show the first record that matches your search. NOTE: The search tool finds multiple spelling variation, so what you see may not be a perfect match.

5. Scroll down to look at individual pages that match your search, more or less. You'll see a name at the top of each Enumeration District page. Look at the data on the page. You can increase the magnification of the page by clicking on the image. Keep scrolling down. Often there are multiple pages to look at. You'll see page numbers when you reach the bottom of each page. Keep looking until you find the person you're looking for. it can take a while, especially for common names.

NOTE: These pages are hand-written. Each location lists everyone who lives at that address. The last name shows up only for the head of household, with wives and children listed only by first name under that name. Check each page carefully.

6. You can also search entire states the same way, if you're not sure of the county you're looking for. Just leave the county field blank. However, if you know the town name, you can google it to find out what county it is in.

7. Once you find the person you're looking for, click the Population Schedules button to display the census page. You can save the image to your device as a JPG file with several different resolutions. To do this, click the three vertical dots and choose "Download." I recommend at least the 1900 pixel resolution or higher, but the files can be quite large.

8. Once you have downloaded the image, you can open it in a graphics viewer or insert it in a document, like Microsoft Word, for printing.

Final Note: If you want to start a new search, just return to the main link in this post and repeat. It's not easy to clear the search from the search application, so just start over.

[Hoyt]

1. Thanks. I've been looking forward to this info. Previously, I found census data from

my grandparents born in the late 1890s and my parents living with them.

It was very cool seeing it and learning a little bit about them. I especially liked it was in handwriting, rather than some cold computer generated stuff.

[msfiddlestix]

2. That was the year I was born.

I'll check it out thanks.

[kimbutgar]

3. Very cool

I found my Parents and Grandfather.

Thanks for sharing.

[MineralMan]

14. Excellent!

[LiberalFighter]

4. Directions from a computer browser (I use Firefox)

When going to the link MineralMan provided. Look below 1950 Census Records in middle panel with the i inside green circle. It will say Search the 1950 Census at 1950Census.Archives.gov

Click on that or the link I provided. From there do the directions MineralMan provided.

[MineralMan]

13. Yeah. I mentioned another link on that landing page, too.

[Glorfindel]

5. Thanks, MineralMan!

I found myself (age 4), my two sisters, and my parents. My brother was in Korea at the time. I'm going to have great fun with this census!

[MineralMan]

12. My pleasure.

I discovered that my best friend through the school years lived quite close to me when I was just four or five. Both families moved later, but near each other. It was a small, small town.

[LiberalFighter]

6. I found my mother and her parent's household but not my father's.

They only had the initial clerk page. Guess I need to wait.

[jaysunb]

7. My first appearance. 😆

An unemployed child in my grandparents house @ LAUDERDALE COUNTY MISSISSIPPI.
Strike up the band.

😆 🤣

[MineralMan]

10. Yay. And there you are, duly counted.

[nitpicker]

16. Hoping to see myself show up next time

If I can survive the local interstate...

[nitpicker]

8. Some of the data will be unsearchable

Due to errors in writing, reading handwriting, etc.

For example, I eventually found my grandmother referenced as Ueda, one uncle referenced as Gane, etc.

At least they got Zealand right...

[MineralMan]

9. Yes. Automated reading of handwriting is sort of spotty.

However, since they include spelling variations, you can usually spot the names.

[nitpicker]

11. And the searching mangled my father's name too

At least I found him as a lodger in town ((to attend the local college)).

[nitpicker]

15. And he even knew what year he was born!

Versus the 1940 census when he got a year shaven off his age...

((of course, back in the days of big families, some confusion could ensue...))

((P.S. the local recorder/undertaker mistook his name and date of birth amongst other things, so I rate him as 5 minutes to midnight))

[Mariana]

17. Thanks, MineralMan!

My father and his parents got skipped in the 1940 census, but they're in this one.

[MineralMan]

18. Cool. We can't find my wife's parents.

1950 was the year they got married. They might well have been on their honeymoon when the census taker came by. Not as much follow-up back then, I think. They have unusual names, so they should be easy to find. I spent a couple of hours searching today.

[Mariana]

22. I've seen a lot of mangled names in previous censuses.

It'll be worse in the future. My friend did census taking in 2020 and she told me she was not allowed to ask people how to spell their names. She had to write what she heard - and she's terrible at spelling to begin with. What a mess that will be!

I went through the whole enumeration district page by page, looking for my father in the 1940. It wasn't just their house that was missing, it was several of their neighbors as well. Maybe the census taker was tired and didn't want to walk all the way down that road that day.

[MineralMan]

24. Sure. That's why immigrants ended up with different spellings

for their names. It can cause all sorts of confusion, for sure.

[leftstreet]

19. Thanks. Hope other search engines will use better software

Unbelievably horrible for tech in 2022

I see a place where they encourage users to correct names and spellings. Guess they went with a crappy Amazon contract and decided to let unpaid labor (we the people) fix everything for them.

[MineralMan]

21. The biggest problem is in machine reading of handwriting.

That is probably the biggest source of errors in the searches. I know I spotted some such errors, while browsing through pages from my home town. For me, though, it doesn't really matter all that much. I'm just curious about such things. I don't do genealogy or anything like that. For example, I learned that my best friend at school lived very near me at age 5. We became friends a few years later after we had moved to other addresses, which were also pretty close to each other.

None of that matters to me in any real way, though. Its just interesting. So, I'm not that concerned about data errors from old handwritten paperwork. I'm surprised it works at all, really.

[SilverDawg]

20. Thank you!

I found my parents, my older brother and uncle. I was able to add transcription notes to correct errors created due to cursive writing. 😎

[MineralMan]

23. Good for you for making error corrections.

All of this is most useful for people doing genealogy. For the rest of us, it's just a curiosity, really. I'm glad you had success in finding people. I did, too.

[hunter]

25. Some of this seems an invasion of privacy, not a large one after 72 years, still...

... there are stories to tell.

My mom and my wife's dad both lived near the shipyards during World War II, next door or over the back fence to houses of prostitution. My mom's parents were welders. My father-in-law's parents worked in the shipyards as well. As "latchkey" kids both my mom and my father-in-law have fond memories of some of the pretty ladies who kept watch over their neighborhoods while their parents worked.

I wonder if some of those women were still there in 1950 and what became of them.

Both neighborhoods are gone now, completely obliterated by redevelopment.

My dad's family had some money. His childhood home still exists, in what's now a very expensive neighborhood. I've also found homes of his grandparents and great grandparents in San Francisco. These were ordinary middle class dwellings when my dad was a kid. That's when my great grandmother sold them, since she was a widow without any sort of pension. Now they are two million dollar properties.

[MineralMan]

27. I suppose so, although I don't feel like my privacy has been invaded.

I was 5 years old. I see a lot of names near where I was counted. Most of them are no longer alive, including the man, George Moore, whose name is at the top as the census taker. He was a nice man. I haven't thought about him for decades. His children were my schoolmates.

The census is a snapshot of our nation taken at 10-year intervals. As that, it is incredibly valuable. Studied and dissected by people who look at it from all sorts of perspectives, the patterns it reveals are important. As you pointed out with San Francisco, the data can put a microscope on how the city has changed. Patterns of change can help us understand many things.

So, I don't think anyone should feel like their privacy is invaded by this information being released 72 years later. Much of the information is available through other vital records, anyhow.

[Ms. Toad]

33. Privacy is the reason it's been kept sealed until now.

By law, they are released 72 years after the census. At that point, the benefit to the public is deemed more important than the privacy of people still alive, most of whom who were mostly not yet adults.

My parents were 18. They are both still alive, and just turned 90. I've done a bit of dabbling in geneology - folks in my father's generation have done more. These records are invaluable.

I've come accross "roommates" who were the same gender - so this also offers some important clues to confirm famly rumors about "spinster aunts" for example.

[hunter]

49. It is remarkable how "spinster aunts" and "bachelor uncles" managed to get on with their lives...

... in those dark times.

I can't even imagine the pressures most of them faced keeping up appearances.

"Oh yeah, we're just living together, expenses, you know. Two can live cheaper than one."

This was true even in the later 'seventies and early 'eighties. My first serious girlfriend was a walking human time bomb. If not for family money and lawyers she might have self-destructed.

[Ms. Toad]

26. You can help make the data more searchable by adding transcriptions

I found all but one of my immediate family. My dad was in college, in a large county - and with poor transcription and a common name, I didn't find him.

For step 4: If you know several people who lived in the same household, instead of looking for a specific person enter the first names of several family members.

In the secondary pages, scroll the list for family names one right after another. I found my mother's family that way.

For step 4: If you have a touch pad (or screen) you can pinch and spread to read more easily.

For step 5: To get to the page, click on the population schedule link.

I added transcriptions for both families - in theory they will be active in 24 hours. That way so anyone coming after can find them more easily.

I did several searches by clearing individual filters rather than starting over - it was pretty easy.

[MineralMan]

28. Thanks. My goal was just to help get people started, really.

I'm done with the data at this point. For those who want to dig deeper, more will be revealed through use and tips like yours.

My curiosity is satisfied already.

[Ms. Toad]

32. I just figured a response to you would get more attention to a nested response.

Still haven't found my father - but I found his frat brother Clayton Yeutter, so I know I'm in the right place. . .

I was pretty sure he lived in the frat house (since he met my mother when her father (a professor in the ag program) took pity on the very young student (16 when he started college) and invited him home for an occasional home cooked meal. But maybe he was just a member but didn't live there.

I sent him a couple of links. Once I know for sure where he lived, I should be able to find him.

[MineralMan]

34. I'm sure you will. Maybe with a different spelling of his name.

1950 was a long time ago, for sure. I had forgotten living in the house we were in. We moved to another one shortly after that. My mother would have been pregnant with my younger brother at the time, but I guess they didn't count coming children until they were actually born. That's interesting, too.

I hope you find him in the census.

[dumbcat]

29. DAMN! I was mis-gendered already in 1950!

I can't believe it!

Thanks to MM, I went through the search process and found my family. My dad, mom, and my one-year-old self. (My brother wasn't born yet.) In the relationship column they have me correctly identified as a "son", but in the SEX column it has F for female. Damn, the system was screwing things up even in 1950.

[MineralMan]

31. Oopsie!

[msfiddlestix]

30. 'very interesting, thanks for the instructions

my search involves the City of Atlanta Ga. Atlanta occupies two counties. If memory serves the hospital I was born is located in DeKalb and I think parents lived in Fulton county. I do know that their High School was located at Little Five Points which is where Omni Center and CNN is located if memory serves. It's weird searching because I have a feeling my father wasn't prone to responding to Census questionnaires.I did find a potential cousin, just a couple of years older than my dad.

gonna bookmark and do a more thorough search later, thanks again.

[llmart]

36. My daughter has been doing genealogy for about 27 years.

I got a message from her yesterday which said, "I found you". I thought, what does she mean by that? But in another message she said, "In the census". I knew it was being released on the 1st but had forgotten it was the 1st. I grew up in a very small, rural town where the houses were very far apart (mostly farms). For address it said, "seven houses down from the tavern on the right hand side". Ha! No house numbers back then. I was not even one year old yet.

What I find interesting is seeing the names of the families around us. It brought back some memories that's for sure. However, the ages of my parents were incorrect and off by one year.

[MineralMan]

37. Those ages could be from the date the census was taken.

I suspect it missed a lot of birthdays. That could make it look like it was off by one year.

[llmart]

38. The record I saw had all my siblings correct (there were seven of us).

The age is supposed to be that which you were on your last birthday, which, if your birthday month was before April 1950 (that was when my parents were contacted), it would be their age in 1949 because their birthdays were in May and July. They were both the same age - 38 but were listed as both being 37.

Heck, maybe they couldn't remember how old they were what with all those kids to take care of!

[MineralMan]

39. Ah, that explains it.

Thanks!

[hunter]

43. My parents claim life was a blur whenever me and my siblings recall things from our childhoods...

... they don't.

I believe them.

Their first priority was food and safe shelter for all of us.

Anything beyond that was a good time to take a nap.

[llmart]

47. That is so true.

My parents didn't live long and I've always thought it was because their lives were full of strife from having too many kids and not enough money. There were many times I remember being hungry. There were a few times before I was born that my oldest sister tells me they were homeless, so had to live with relatives. My father was a musician so one time he and my mother and four siblings lived in a room on the second floor of an inn that operated as a nightclub/upscale restaurant. My mother cooked on a hotplate. When they finally found a place to rent out in the country, she didn't even have running hot water and by that time there were five of us.

[brooklynite]

40. Hypothetical: you want to look up a "Joseph R. Biden" in Scranton

Select Pennsylvania

Select Scranton/LAckawanna

Enter "Biden" as name.

Link to tweet

[MineralMan]

46. +100!

[FakeNoose]

41. Thanks! I just spent about 4-1/2 hours going through all that stuff

It's easy to get lost in all those maps and archives. Next time I do this I'll set my alarm clock.

[MineralMan]

45. LOL!

[Demsrule86]

42. I can't read it...it is faded cursive...

[MineralMan]

44. The ones I looked were OK when enlarged.

[llmart]

48. I had no trouble reading it.

I downloaded a page and then zoomed in.

[Ms. Toad]

50. There were a few that were challenging.

It is cursive, so if you're younger that - alone - is a challenge.

Some had better handwriting than others.

And some were not careful with spelling . . . One of my relatives' name is Edwyn. It's spelled that way in the 1940 adn 1930 censuses. In this one it's Edwin.

[myccrider]

51. Not finding my parents...

but with the surname ‘Smith’ and the size of the state, Texas, it could take hours. I thought they were living in Dallas just before I was born but only one Claude Smith showed up and he wasn’t Dad. Tried a broader search of the whole state but 10 pages with 20+ hits on each page came up. I’ll probably wait until Ancestry does their own indexing where the search engine allows for the names of other family members to influence the results.

I’ve volunteered to help review and edit Ancestry’s optical scan, when it’s available, through FamilySearch.org. They haven’t sent me a notice to start yet. Presumably Ancestry will take several days to start turning over the raw scans. Should be interesting (and tedious and eye-strain-y) but worthwhile. I’ve never done this before.

Here’s a link for anyone interested in helping (and you can choose to review just your relatives, too): https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/indexing-1950-census