Instructions
1. Find one member of your family in the United States census for 1940 using
• Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org (searchable by name)
• National Archives and Records Administration to browse by location. I only recommend this if you know precisely where your ancestors were living, or have a deep interest in examining many pages of old census returns
If you do not have ancestors who were resident in the United States in 1940, you have two options. You can 1) search for the ancestors of a friend, or 2) Let me know by Friday, 9 September and I will provide you (by 14 September) with the vital details of some actual families that you will be able to find.
Please turn over for more instructions
Save the image(s) of the census forms on which you find the household of your family members. If your family is at the bottom of a page their household will continue onto a second page.
2. Submit the image(s) along with a page of writing responding to the following prompts.
1. List the household number (column 3) and line numbers (left and right edge) of sheet that correspond to your family members
2. What identifying information did you use to find your ancestor?
3. Did you have any difficulties finding your ancestor? For example, did you initially try to locate someone else and switch to the person you are reporting on? Was what you knew about your ancestor from family members today consistent with what was reported on the census?
4. What was the most interesting or surprising thing you learned about your ancestor from the census?
5. Looking at your ancestor's household in comparison to other households on the same page (and perhaps surrounding pages), how were your ancestors similar to and different from their neighbors? [Hint: look down a column. Were most people born in similar places, doing similar jobs, were all living there 5 years ago? Or were the neighbors diverse?]
6. Select one variable (question) that you are particularly interested in.
7. Now, using either Historical Statistics of the United States or the US Census Bureau website, find out something about the place your ancestor lived in 1940.
You can define the "level" of geography yourself, city, county, or state (smaller areas like neighborhoods are more problematic across time).
In 2-3 sentences describe your area, and compare it to the same information for the United States.
8. Pick another census year from 1960 onwards and
a. Find the same information about the same place. How did the area your ancestor lived in change?
b. Find the same information about the United States. How did the United States change?
Resources for
Historical Statistics of the United States: [Library: Databases: H]
Census Bureau: https://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html
IPUMS links to census publications: https://usa.ipums.org/usa/voliii/tPublished.shtml