I don't know about you, but I'm getting excited! It's been ten years since the 1920 U.S. Federal census was released, and on 1 April 2002, the 1930 census will be released by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

I'm getting geared up to track down my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins—and especially to continue my search for my elusive great-uncle, Brisco HOLDER. (Wish me luck.) Perhaps most intriguing to me will be to finally learn what age my Grandmother MORGAN gave to the enumerator in 1930. Born in 1873, she gave her age in 1910 as thirty-four and in 1920 as forty. Was that her idea of "new math?" I'm betting she won't show up as more than forty-five or forty-six!

As we all prepare ourselves for NARA's release of the 1930 census, there are some things you can do to prepare yourself, and these are the focus of "Along Those Lines . . ." this week.

Start Learning All You Can
We've known for almost seventy-two years what information was asked on the Fifteenth Census of the United States in 1930. Census day that year was 1 April 1930. Census day is the benchmark day on which the enumerators, or census takers, based their questions. One such question for my Grandmother MORGAN would have been, "On April first, what was your age?" (Knowing her, the answer was absolute fiction; she never admitted her real age until the day she turned ninety.)

As of that date, the official population of the U.S. was enumerated at 123,202,624. NARA is releasing more than just population schedules in microform format; there have already begun shipping microfilm of the Enumeration District Maps, which illustrate the enumeration districts' boundaries and their numbers.

In addition to the population schedules and the enumeration district maps, there are also the Indian Census Schedules, which were required by law to be prepared every year between 1885 and 1940. The important change beginning in the 1930 enumeration was that the rolls also show the degree of Indian blood, marital status, ward status, place of residence, and sometimes some additional information. This is vital documentation for the researcher tracing his or her Native American ancestry on a reservation. However, other Native Americans living off the reservations may be included in the general population schedules, but without the special information I just described.

Another important part of the 1930 census for some researchers will be the Soundex reference index for locating families. Unfortunately, though, Soundex microfilm is only available for twelve states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia (coded in Miracode format rather than Soundex), part of Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and a part of West Virginia.

An essential piece of knowledge about the 1930 census is what questions were asked. You can find the list of the 32 questions at the NARA 1930 census Web site. Included there are also the coding the enumerators were instructed to use when completing the population schedule forms.

In addition to checking the NARA Web site, start reading all you can about the 1930 census. Certainly, one great new book, which describes all the Federal censuses, including the 1930 census, is Finding Answers in U.S. Census Records, by Loretto Dennis Szucs and Matthew Wright. (See the bibliographic citation below.) Every Federal census' contents and excellent strategies for successful research are crisply described, and I highly recommend the book to you.

Conducting Your Advance Research
Your best strategies for locating the right place to search for your family members begin with a visit to the NARA Web site for the 1930 census. Here you will find information about all of the microfilm to be released for this census and the locations of the NARA facilities at which the census microfilm will be available. Libraries and archives can also purchase the microfilm rolls they want and can afford.

Start your search by preparing a list of all the family members you believe were living as of 1 April 1930. Start with what you may already know, such as the county, town/city/township, and address of your family members, and add this information to your list. If you aren't 100 percent positive, try to determine where they were for the 1920 census. The family may have remained in the same area, and you may be lucky and locate them in the same place. However, you will still want to know their exact address if possible. One extremely helpful tool for checking this may be the city directory of that place for 1929 and 1930. Alternatively, if your library has kept and preserved telephone directories of those years, they may give you a street address too.

By the way, NARA also has microfilmed city directories from circa 1930 for many areas of the U.S. However, these microfilm publications are not for sale; they are only available for use at the NARA facilities.(Check the list of directories.) If the public library doesn't have the city directories you seek from the time period, don't overlook academic libraries, historical societies, genealogical societies, and the state library or archive.

Next, consult a map of the town circa 1930 to locate the precise location of the family's address in the area. This will help you because next you will consult NARA's Enumeration District Maps microfilm (publication M1930) and/or the Geographic Descriptions of Census Enumeration Districts microfilm (publication T1224). Ancestry.com will be posting these finding aids in the near future on its Web site. They are the keys to quickly locating where in the actual census population schedule microfilm rolls to look for your relatives.

With this information prepared, you should be able to quickly determine the state, county, and enumeration district in which to search for your ancestor. If your family lived in one of the twelve states that are Soundexed, you may have an easier task. That is because the Soundex (or Miracode, in the case of Georgia) microfilm will assist you in locating the family within the state with the image of a card indicating the precise page number of the population schedule on which the family group will be found.

Remember that not every library with a genealogy collection has the budget to afford all the microfilm you might want to access. Therefore, you would be wise to check with your library in advance to determine what they, indeed, may have ordered in the way of 1930 the census microfilm materials. If not, expand your inquiries to larger libraries near you or begin thinking about a research trip to the nearest NARA facility. Don't overlook your nearest LDS Family History Center. In addition, NARA offers a microfilm rental program through which you or your library may rent the 1930 census microfilm.

And Coming Soon . . .
In addition to the NARA microfilm publications, Ancestry.com has announced that they have ordered all the microfilm and plan to rush it back to their offices where the images "will be scanned twenty hours a day, six days a week, using state of the art scanners until the project's completion." They have committed to post the images as soon as they become available and expect the first images to be available to Ancestry.com Census Images Online subscribers within weeks of the release. The project will take some time, of course; there are a whopping two thousand six-hundred and sixty-seven rolls of population schedule microfilm to be scanned. However, Ancestry.com will make the images available as quickly as possible, and following completion of the project to get the images online, will proceed with its project to index every name in the 1930 census.

Ancestry.com has added a 1930 Census Extraction Form to its online collection of charts and forms.

The forms are all free for downloading. All you need is the free Adobe Acrobat Reader software, available at the Adobe Web site at: www.adobe.com

What Are You Waiting For?
Now is the time to get started with your research. Don't be the last one in line to use the microfilm reader. With some advance reading and preparation, you may know my grandmother's age before I do. I can't wait!

Happy Hunting!
George

Bibliography:
Szucs, Loretto Dennis and Matthew Wright. Finding Answers in U.S. Census Records. Orem, UT: Ancestry Publishing. 2001.