Ancestry Daily News
  Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak – 2/20/2002

Locating Ancestors in the 1930 Census

Many of us are anxiously anticipating the 1 April 2002 release of the 1930 Federal Population Census by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). By law, census records are restricted for seventy-two years for privacy reasons, but the wait is almost over. Since the census day in 1930 was 1 April, that is the day that two thousand, six hundred and sixty-seven microfilmed rolls of population schedules will be released for public access at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and thirteen regional branches, this year.

So all of us can rush right out and find our families in the 1930 census, right? Not quite. We've become accustomed from most of the earlier census records to using the Soundex finding aid. This personal name indexing tool makes it relatively easy for us to pluck our ancestors out of the millions of names in a given census, and those of us whose kin resided in twelve southern states will still have this luxury for the 1930 census. To be more specific, indexes using the Soundex exist for the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky (part), Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia (part).

The rest of us are not so lucky. We're going to have to muddle through without any Soundex. That might not be too much of an obstacle if your family hails from a sparsely populated, rural area, but what about those of us whose families lived in major urban areas such as New York or Chicago?

Fortunately, the National Archives has already thought of this and made some finding aids available (see merrimack.nara.gov/genealogy/1930cen.html for details). The more you know about the family you're seeking, the more useful these tools will be. At a bare minimum, you'll want to know the names involved and the state and county in which they lived. To improve your chances, you'll want to learn their exact address in 1930. If you were around in 1930, you can be your own source for this information, but how can you learn this if you're a more recent model? Here are a few suggestions:

  • Talk to Your Older Relatives. Chances are you have relatives who were either alive in 1930 or who know where their parents were living at that time. Ask them!
  • Look Through Family Papers. Maybe personal items such as letters, postcards, and photos or official documents such as deeds or vital records will reveal the desired address.
  • Note Where They Lived in the 1920 Census. Just maybe you'll get lucky and they'll have stayed in the same place.
  • Search City Directories. Perhaps one of the most underutilized resources, these can tell you exactly where your family was living in 1930. Recognizing this, NARA has posted a list of city directories they've made available at regional branches at: merrimack.nara.gov/genealogy/citydirs.html. Additional assistance can be found at: www.cyndislist.com/citydir.htm and many major libraries have city directories for their area or state.

    So now you've found the street address. What next? You'll need to find out which enumeration district (ED) contained the address to narrow your search. This will enable you to, for instance, search just one neighborhood in Pittsburgh, rather than the whole city. Once again, NARA has anticipated this need and made several important finding aids available:

  • Enumeration district maps numbering eight thousand three hundred and forty-five sheets spanning thirty-six rolls have been reproduced as NARA microfilm publication M1930, Enumeration District Maps for the Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930.

  • Geographic descriptions of enumeration districts are provided in NARA microfilm publication T1224, Descriptions of Census Enumeration Districts, 1830-1950. Descriptions of enumeration districts for the 1930 census are arranged by state, then by county, on rolls sixty-one through ninety. Details are available on the NARA Web site mentioned earlier.

  • The seven rolls of NARA microfilm publication M1931, Index to Selected City Streets and Enumeration Districts, 1930 Census contain address indexes to help you convert addresses into EDs for more than fifty larges cities, although it's not clear how the cities were selected. For example, Kansas City, KS is included, but he much larger Kansas City, MO is not. (The list of cities included in this publication is at: www.nara.gov/genealogy/1930census_city_streets.html) More on this shortly.

    Online Finding Aid
    Those of us with big city roots should all be grateful to Stephen P. Morse, Joel D. Weintraub, and David R. Kehs for the tool they've just launched at: home.pacbell.net/spmorse/census/

    Building on data transcribed by Weintraub, this site is called "Obtaining EDs for the 1930 Census in One Step (Large Cities)" and that's exactly what it helps you do for a number of major cities that weren't indexed in the M1931 microfilm series mentioned above. So now if your family resided in Jersey City or one of about one hundred other cities, your research just became a lot easier.

    Researchers with Ellis Island ancestors are already familiar with Morse's one-step tool to help search the Ellis Island database (home.pacbell.net/spmorse/ellis/ellis.html), and luckily for us, he's at it again. As with his other tools, I strongly recommend that you read his Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), which will help you understand how to get the most from this site as well as what its limitations are. You'll also get a quick education in the 1930 census.

    Essentially, the site helps you determine the ED or EDs in which a given street was recorded. It does so by taking you through a straightforward query process. When you first go to the page, a single field will appear asking you to select a state from a drop- down menu. It then takes you through a series of additional questions. For example, I conducted a search with the following specifications:

    State: NJ
    City: Jersey City
    Street: Bright St.
    House number: 136 (map)
    Cross street: Varick (map)
    Cross street: Monmouth Result: ED 41

    So now I can focus my search for my great-grandparents in just one ED. If I had stopped at just the first street, my search would have been narrowed to six EDs, but adding others helped me zero in even more.

    How did I know these cross streets? I didn't. Entering the house number activated a mapping function incorporated into the site. From the current-day map that opened, I could then identify nearby streets. Entering one of these brought my choice down to two EDs. Consulting the map, which the intersection of these two streets generated, I selected one more that formed part of the closed city block that interested me. This last entry whittled the field down to a single ED.

    If there is an already existing resource for the address you seek, you might be informed of this at some point in the process. For instance, if you select one of the twelve states that were Soundexed, you'll be reminded of this fact. If you select a city that is contained in the address index microfilm series, you'll be directed to the exact roll that contains your city of interest (incidentally, FAQ No.10 contains a list of cities in this series). And if you specify a city that's not covered in this site (since it's a purely volunteer effort, they drew the line at cities with populations below eighty thousand, although they invite volunteers to contribute the necessary data to add other cities), it will point you to the exact roll in the above-referenced ED geographic description finding aid you'll need to continue your research. For those of us with roots in Wilkes-Barre, PA, Sacramento, CA, or any of one hundred other large cities, this tool arrived on the scene just in time!

    Megan Smolenyak, author of In Search of Our Ancestors, companion book to the 2000 PBS Ancestors series, and the forthcoming Honoring Our Ancestors: Inspiring Stories of the Quest for Our Roots, can be reached through www.honoringourancestors.com

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