Finding family in the 1950 U.S. Census

Barney Roth Family in the 1950 Census

In the U.S. the census is taken every ten years as mandated by the Constitution, but the data is not released to the public for 72 years!  The 1950 census was released on April 1 of this year and for family historians, it was a VERY BIG DEAL.  Like all of the earlier census records, the 1950 census was not indexed prior to its release so in order to find someone and see the answers to the various questions asked that year, you had to know the address where they lived at the time that the census enumerator visited them.  Hundreds of volunteers are working to review and correct the indices prepared for the first time by artificial intelligence, so the time between release and the completion of the indices will be shorter than in the past, but for many, it's still too long to wait to see those records.

I was one of those who couldn't wait.  This would be the first census where I, myself, would appear.  I wasn't sure where we were living in April 1950 when the census was taken but I had seen photos of a bungalow with my grandparents proudly displaying the infant me, so I started there. I remembered that I had one of the announcements of my birth that my Mom had pasted into my baby book.  It had an address, 9 Penwood Ave in Trenton, NJ.  Using the tools provided by Steve Morse on his "one-step" web pages,  and maps of the city as well as a map of the enumeration districts in 1950, I determined which enumeration district (ED) had that address and proceeded to examine every page in the census of that ED.  We weren't there!

I remembered that my parents had said that we moved to a larger place shortly after my brother was born in June 1949.  I knew where that was - Brookville Apartments, a newly constructed complex of garden apartments between the old canal and the Delaware River. We lived there until I was about six. Back to the map to find a street address (the buildings are still there) and to Stevemorse.org to find the ED.  There were two that could have included this complex, so I began examining each page of the most likely ED, number 33-189.  On sheet 7 I found my family!  In building 1922, Apartment B-1 lived Barney Roth, age 40 born in NJ, his wife Eleanor (sp) Melba age 29 born in Pennsylvania, his daughter Mary Jane (me) age 2, and his son Armin Jeffrey born the previous June. Barney is noted as the proprietor of his own store selling wholesale and retail tires and televisions who worked 60 hours in the previous week, and Elynore was listed as keeping house. Unfortunately, none of us was selected for the additional questions at the bottom of the sheet.

Finding myself was exciting enough, but since I remembered that my father's brother Ben and his wife had also lived in that complex when I was a child, I thought I would look at the remaining pages in the ED to find them.  To my surprise, I not only found Ben and Alice Roth but also living nearby in the ED, his other brothers Aaron and Isidore, five other of his cousins and their families, as well as my maternal grandparents Nat and Ida Lieberman with their other daughter and grandson. I would not have known where to look for the others until the index was completed.

Finding these folks that I knew in the census gave me lots of information besides their address to help fill out their stories.  Finding Isidore confirmed my baby memory that he worked on a dairy farm  (a hazy memory since he died while I was still very young).  Finding my Aunt who was listed as "Separated" gave me a hint on when to look for her divorce. Alice and Ben's son Daniel was still single and working as a plastics molder - not the occupation of salesman that I always knew. Sam Lavinthal was retired, but his family living with him earned $6000 in the previous year. Ben Lavinthal served in the U.S. Armed Forces in WWII.

It will take me longer to find a family when I have no idea where they were living in 1950.  I'll have to wait for the indexes.  I still have lots of work to do with the hints I have already found, but I'm already looking forward to 2032 when the 1960 census will be released!