The release of the 1940 census without an index has me thinking about which people I will search for manually and which ones I will wait for until the index comes out. There are some people that I am certain enough of their residence that I can look for them. There are others who are in rural areas where searching will not take an inordinate amount of time.
There are others that I do not have good addresses for and are living in urban areas. Looking for them may take hours, if not days. In those cases, I’m going to wait for the index. Sometimes one has to decide if the time spent is worth it. In those cases there’s likely nothing “earth-shattering” in the enumeration and my time can be better used re-evaluating information I already have or looking in other records.
It’s fun to find people in the 1940 census, but I’m waiting to search for Mary Williams in Chicago (with no address) until the index comes out.
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When is the index coming out? Please say it is soon!?!?
I'm not certain about that, but I bet there'll be some indexes out in a few weeks. In the mean time, I'm making a list of people I'd like to find who aren't so easy to find now.
I agree Michael, I'm making a list as well and using the time Ancestry is giving us with the 1940s era records (till April 10th) to do a little background and make note of EDs.
Good ideas. Thanks. I guess I should not have let myself get so excited at the 1940 rollout.
Ancestry has Nevada and Delaware done already and another one has Bristol County, Rhode Island.
My family lived in a rural area and after examining the ED descriptions, I knew which one to go to. What I didn't expect was to find my family was on page 1A. How lucky can you get?