[Nmtriblibs] 1950 Census Records Now Available

[Osterloh, Cassandra, DCA]

Released by the US National Archives today, April 1, 2022.
1950 Census - Home | 1950 Census (archives.gov)<https://1950census.archives.gov/>



From the NYT: Seven Decades Later, the 1950 Census Bares Its Secrets - The New York Times (nytimes.com)<https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/31/us/census-data-1950.html?fbclid=IwAR0MFxmS0HBdlJxcbsU5sJuAoBgGZ0eEkV0J_4ME1JQDeV0vz2B3E8ra_MI>

...the 1950 list was exhaustive — up to 38 questions<https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1950/questions-asked>, from mundane queries about age, sex and race to deeper dives into people’s occupations, incomes, military status, education and ancestry. Married women were asked how many children they had borne, and children born between January and April of 1950 were tallied on special “infant cards”<https://historyhub.history.gov/community/genealogy/census-records/blog/2021/04/19/1950-census-infant-cards-and-the-special-infant-enumeration-study> — another 17 questions long.

The infant cards were not retained. But answers from the census forms were coded onto punch cards and tabulated, for the first time ever, on a UNIVAC I computer, 16,000 pounds and 5,000 vacuum tubes of calculating muscle. Then the census forms were photographed, transferred to nearly 6,400 microfilm rolls and shipped to the National Archives for a 72-year rest. The rolls contain only the front side of the census forms. The reverse, which held answers to a litany of questions about the condition of places where respondents lived, were not preserved.

The images being released on Friday are digitized versions of the microfilm records that have been scanned with special optical character recognition software to locate and translate handwritten names and addresses into searchable text.

The for-profit genealogical firm Ancestry.com plans to immediately download and scan the census forms using its own character-recognition software. Then Family Search, <https://www.familysearch.org/1950census/> a nonprofit group sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, intends to marshal volunteers to inspect and correct the results, a process that is likely to take several months.


Cassandra E. Osterloh, MLS, MA (Cherokee Nation)
Pronouns: she, her, hers​
Tribal Libraries Program Coordinator
Library Development Services Bureau
New Mexico State Library
1209 Camino Carlos Rey
Santa Fe, NM 87507

505-476-9764 (office)
505-264-2427 (cell)
cassandra.osterloh at state.nm.us
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