More Tips on Using the 1950 Census

Now that the 1950 federal census has been released, many of us have attempted to find our families or even ourselves. In looking for your relatives, you may have discovered that some major genealogy websites are in the process of indexing but have different states available. According to a news article from the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, Ancestry and FamilySearch have partnered to create an index. Ancestry began by using a proprietary Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology so an entire census index could be released as soon as the census went live from the National Archives in April. Now, FamilySearch volunteers are reviewing and making corrections to that index. The National Archives also released an OCR index and is asking for assistance in finding and correcting errors.

One of our StLGS volunteers, John “J. T.” Taylor, was indexing for FamilySearch, when he came across a unique dilemma and reached out for an explanation. John wrote, “I am helping index the Alabama 1950 census and came across this. There are some added lines on the last page (attached) of this district. I know it is a "revisit" page. [No one home the first time, so the enumerator returned at a later date.] These entries are out of order in this enumeration district. But it does not match what the original enumerator wrote . . . [and] the info does not match the columns. . . . It is lines 8 to 17.” [under the darker ink]

As you can see in the screen capture that John sent (above) the enumerator inserted code numbers instead of information for the people at the bottom of the page. We suggested that John contact Christina Miller and John Dougan at the Missouri State Archives, which he did, and they were instrumental in clarifying this census sheet.

Christina pointed out that “Persons transcribed from ICR” on the sheet refers to “Individual Census Reports, which were left by enumerators when they were unable to contact a person in-person.” These people were reassigned by the census bureau to this enumeration district. The other people on the sheet also appear to be reassigned, Christina said, “although not from an ICR. Unfortunately, since they were reassigned later on, while they lived in this enumeration district, the exact address is unclear.”

She further explained that the entries that appear not to make sense actually do, if you know that the person who filled out that sheet “used punch card codes (i.e. “1” for man, “2” for woman) instead of the normal fields (with the exceptions being age and number of hours worked). Assuming that each number stands for the possible fields listed in the order they have been written on the census, a person looking for any of these individuals should be able to translate the punch codes accordingly. For instance, in household 901, line 8, Joe Wright is listed as “1” (head of household). Then 2 [under Joe] would correspond to the next designation (wife), and so forth.”

A thorough discussion of the 1950 census is now in the wiki at FamilySearch.org: https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/United_States_Census_1950#Form_P2.2C_Individual_Census_Report)

Another good resource for understanding more about this census is on the National Archives website: https://www.archives.gov/calendar/genealogy-series/2022

For searching the census:

1. National Archives: https://1950census.archives.gov
2. FamilySearch: https://www.familysearch.org/1950census/
3. Ancestry: https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/62308/  (Scroll down for information; only subscribers can make corrections; however, since they are in partnership with FamilySearch, non-subscribers are encouraged to contribute to the indexing on that site.)

Our thanks to StLGS volunteer, John Taylor, for sharing this information and to reference librarian, Christina Miller, and Missouri State Archivist, John Dougan, for helping us to understand it.