How To: Access the 1940 Census

The 1940 Census was placed on-line, FREE to the public, on 2 April 2012. After a couple of days of growing pains, servers overloaded, everything seems to be working quite successfully now.

I'm going to outline the procedure I used to access the census from my home computer.

First, I recommended that you bookmark these two Web-Sites. Put them in a local bookmark folder called – 1940 CENSUS

The first one is the official launch site for the 1940 Census.

http://1940census.archives.gov/

The next website you will want to bookmark is Steve Morse Unified 1940 Census ED Finder

http://stevemorse.org/census/unified.html

Now we are ready to start.

Step by Step procedures

With Steve Morse Unified 1940 Census ED Finder you can find your ancestor by:

• ·         Specifying a Location
• ·         By Using the 1930 ED (enumeration district) for Location

(Note: the ED is located in the top right corner of every census page.)

Specifying a Location.

Here you just complete the blanks on the Unified 1940 Census ED Finder webpage

State – select -  South Carolina

County – Select - Chesterfield

City or town – select (other specify) and then enter town i.e. Cheraw in block on right

The web page will display in BLUE the corresponding 1940 ED numbers

By clicking on the BLUE ED NUMBER it will take you directly to that ED in the 1940 Census.

Note: Once you get you ED displayed it will consist of multiple pages i.e. 1 of 32 pages.

The First page of the ED you SELECTED will be displayed.

Until an INDEX is COMPLETE, the only way  to find your Ancestor is to go through the census page line by line and page by page.

By Using the 1930 ED (enumeration district) for Location

Here, the first thing you will want to do is to find your ancestor ED from his/her 1930 Census listing

(Note: the ED is located in the top right corner of every census page.)

Go to the Unified 1940 Census ED Finder website

Find the section label "If you know your 1930 ED for this location…"

Select – State – South Carolina

Select ED –  Click on the Arrow and select Chesterfield; the web page will display (13) Chesterfield and give you a block to select the last number in your ED

i.e. one of the ED from 1930 for Cheraw was 13-10; If I select 10 in the block the Webpage will display:   

1940 ED numbers corresponding to your location

13-8

NOTE: Remember you can click on this blue number and it will take you to the first page of ED 13-8.

If you use an ED, it assumed you ancestor remained in the same location for the past 10 years.  

In the area where the ED is displayed, if you click on the More Details button it will give you additional information including the Roll # for citation purposes.


Other sites providing access to the 1940 Census are

Ancestry 

My Heritage

Documentation:

 Good documentation tells you where you got your information and allows you to revisit a source for clarification or for additional information. I highly recommend that all your data be documented and sourced. For an outstanding "encyclopedia" on source citations you should consult Elizabeth Shown Mills "Evidence Explained".

 For documenting the 1940 Census please read Thomas MacEntee article entitled "Source Citation Format for 1940 Census Images".