Finding R.F.D.3 Box 64B Kent, Washington in the 1940 Census

Posted on April 4, 2012 by

When my mother was 3 years old, she was living at the above address.  When you lived in a rural area, you did not have street names and house numbers.  All I had was this address I pulled from her baby book.   A rural mail route is not something you can enter directly into the 1940 Census One-Step tool at SteveMorse.org.  Since I had a general idea of where they lived, I was going to need to view the Enumeration District Maps.  Here is the process I went through.

  • Found the ED maps for King County, Washington through SteveMorse.org which will redirect to the images at the National Archives.
  • I first viewed the maps for Kent, Washington. These only included the town and the not the rural area I needed.
  • Next I viewed all of the maps listed for King County that were not tied to a city. There were 28 maps to view.
  • Found the general area on map 22 of 28. See highlighted yellow area.

NARA Series: A3378 Roll:00069 Frame:197

  • From this map I thought they would either be in Meridian (17-134) or Suise Creek (17-190) district.  I downloaded both of the districts, went through all the images and did not find them.  Then I noticed some faint writing to the left of the yellow highlighted area.  It was Russell district. I had a hard time making out the ED number and thought it was 17-177.  To make sure, I used the Unified 1940 Census ED Finder to confirm this.
  • I called up all of the Enumeration Districts in King County, Washington by entering the State and County and then clicking on the Get 1940 Ed Number(s) button.

 

  •  This will bring up all the ED numbers for the selected criteria.

  • Click on the radio button next to 1940 ED Description and then click on the ED number.  This will take you the Enumeration District Description.

NARA Series: T1224 Roll: 00117 Frame: 874

I have now confirmed that Russell Election Precinct is indeed number 17-177.

  • I downloaded the enumeration district images from NARA and started reviewing.  On the 12th image, I found my mom’s family.

I have to say that I am glad the initial release of the 1940 Census images are not indexed.  This is really forcing us to understand so much about the records and locations we are researching as well as the other record groups that exist.  This has been a very fun and educational process so far!

 

 

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Memories from an Airline Napkin

Posted on March 31, 2012 by

Trip route marked on napkin starting in Austin, pit stop in Dallas, and ending in St. Louis

Today I was going through some of my miscellaneous files and folders.  One of them was a folder from a trip to DeSoto, MO in 2007. This is the birthplace of my grandmother, Margaret Helen Snyder. As I was going through this folder, which mostly contained itineraries, maps and cemetery listings, I noticed something that was hiding in one of the pockets somewhat crumpled.  It was a Southwest Airlines napkin. I pulled the napkin out of the folder and noticed there was writing on it.  Apparently my daughter, then age 10, had written on it during the plane ride.

It started with the route we were taking as seen in the first picture.

 

 

Story on Airline Napkin part 1

As I flipped the napkin over I discovered a little story she had written.  The transcription follows:

‘Once upon a time long, long ago there was a girl named Ariel. Ariel was with her mom on a plane going to St. Louis. They Went to St. Louis because Ariels mom had to do Geneology. When they were going to St. Louis Ariel left half of her dinner in Austin. Ariel was really mad. So, She ate a power bar. When she arrived at St. Louis she got smothing to eat at’

Airline Napkin Story part 2

The funny thing is, I don’t remember seeing her writing this story on the napkin or putting it into the folder.  I asked her about it today when I found it and she doesn’t remember writing it.

The story is true. I do remember she had eaten half of her sandwich at the airport before our flight left and was going to save the other half for the plane ride.  When she discovered that she had left her sandwich sitting on the seat in the airport, she was very sad.  I did have an emergency Powerbar in my purse for her to eat and I did get her something to eat when we arrived in St. Louis.

I am also happy to report that her spelling has improved and she does know how to spell the word “genealogy” now.

Ariel at DeSoto City Cemetery, DeSoto, MO

She was a trooper during that trip.  We spent quite a few hours in cemeteries and libraries.  Here is a picture of my helper at the DeSoto City Cemetery. And that yellow folder she is holding in her arms? Yes, that is the folder I pulled that napkin out of today.

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Creating Custom Census Events in Legacy Family Tree – Video Demonstration

Posted on March 8, 2012 by

I thought I would create a quick video to demonstrate the methods I used to convert my generic “census” event in Legacy Family Tree to one that is based on the Year/Location of the census as I described in this post. In the video, I walk through creating a custom event, creating a search list of all individuals tied to a specific event, and using the Search List editing features to quickly edit individual events.

Posted in 1940 U.S. Census, Legacy, video | 1 Comment

My Blog Move and Google Reader

Posted on March 6, 2012 by

I spent last night moving my blog from Blogger to WordPress.  I finally got everything put back together,sub-domains, dns entries,etc. and thought everything was working fine last night (I guess it was technically early this morning).   I noticed today the Google Reader is displaying old posts.  I assume this happened when I updated the permanlinks to keep them the same as they were on Blogger.  I apologize to everyone for the unnecessary posts in Google Reader but it should no longer happen as everything is moved and updated.  Hopefully I won’t have any more technical issues!

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1940 U.S. Census Research Plan Part 1 – Census Events

Posted on March 4, 2012 by

I have been sitting with my Legacy Family Tree file figuring out the best plan of attack for researching the 1940 U.S. Census. At first I was just going to run a query of all people living during that time that might be candidates for searching.  This is fine, but since the 1940 census will not be indexed when it is released (see how you can help), I will need to know the Enumeration District that they lived in 1940.  What I need is a better planned approach, rather than just creating a big list of names.  This is the first part of a multi-part series in my planning efforts for the 1940 Census release and using Legacy Family Tree to prepare myself.

My first step is clean up my census events in Legacy. A while back I had decided to create distinct census year events in Legacy instead of the generic “census” event.  Now that I started using this method, I find it much easier to pull reports of people that I have not yet searched in a specific census year.  I also do this for the state census events as well. Here is a screenshot of my census event list today.

Event Definition List from Legacy

I also like how the event displays in the individual event list.  I can see what household and place the person of interest was located very easily on the Edit screen for the Individual. Click on any of the screenshots to see a larger image

Individual Event List from Legacy

I still have many people attached to the old generic Census event. Since I am happy with year/location specific events, I want to retire the generic event and replace with my new method. These are the steps I am going to use to accomplish this.

    1. Create a list of all individuals using the Census event
      1. Go to View–> Master Lists–> Event Definition
      2. Highlight “Census”
      3. Click on Show List – this gives you a list of all individuals using this event type
      4. Click on Create Search List – this will create a working list
    2. Replace each Census event with the Year/Location specific event
Search List Screen in Legacy
    1. Use the working list you created in Step1 by either going there when prompted after you created it or by going to Search–>View Search List
    2. Click on the individual you want to edit on the left-hand side of the screen.  On the right pick the Event tab.  Highlight the event you want to edit and click the edit button at the bottom of the screen.
    3. Edit the following
      1. Event/Fact: Replace with Year/Location specific event
      2. Description: Head of Household name
      3. Notes: I delete the first line as this is where I used to put the head of household description.  See below for before and after screenshots.
    4. Click Save and move on to the next. Continue working through the list until you are done.
Before Edit
After Edit

This is my chore for today.  I don’t think it will take too long since I can work from the search list and edit in the same screen.  This is really a nice feature of Legacy for doing bulk work.  I think I will be pleased with the results when I am through.

If you want to start getting ready for the 1940 cenuses, here are a couple of ideas to do this week.

  1. Visit the 1940 U.S. Census website for lots of ideas and how to get started indexing records.  Without the index, searching will be impossible.
  2. Watch the webinar Are you Ready for the 1940 U.S Census Images? hosted by Legacy Family Tree and presented by Thomas MacEntee on Wednesday, March 7.  Click here to register or view the recording if you miss the live presentation.

Posted in 1940 U.S. Census, Legacy | Leave a comment