Release Of 1940 Census Data Provides Snapshot Of America

[xchrom]

http://www.wbur.org/2012/04/02/census-world-war

BOSTON — At 9 a.m. Monday morning, the National Archives releases raw data from the 1940 U.S. census. Federal law requires that information be kept under wraps for 72 years.

The release is big news for family historians.

‘You Never Know What’s Going To Be In There’

More than a decade before television became the medium that defined a generation, newsreels shown in movie theaters around the nation prepared Americans in 1940 for what would be, to date, the most comprehensive census in the country’s history.

“Official census questions must be answered,” intoned the newsreel announcer. “But the census-taker is sworn to strict confidence, with heavy penalties for violation of his oath.”

And for the last 72 years, the personal information of the more than 130 million Americans confidentially shared to the census-takers remained private, with only the aggregate data released. But the shroud over the individual details is lifted Monday, and that delights genealogists.

[izquierdista]

1. "delights genealogists"

= makes Mormons ecstatic about the number of new baptisms they can perform.

[xchrom]

2. Share the family stories you find in the 1940 time capsule from US Census

http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/02/10972767-share-the-family-stories-you-find-in-the-1940-time-capsule-from-us-census

A time capsule from 1940 will be opened on Monday, at 9 a.m. ET, and we invite readers to share what they find. If you use the new records to find information about the loved or lost in your family, please post a note in the comments below or on our Open Channel page on Facebook.

U.S. Census records for individuals from April 1, 1940, protected until now by a 72-year privacy law, will be public for the first time, revealing details about millions of Americans from that day, as the country lingered in a Great Depression, still a year away from entry into war in Europe and the Pacific.
Advertise | AdChoices

"I'm so excited!" Gary Robert Del Carlo of Martinsburg, W.Va., posted on Facebook. "Maybe for the first time ever, I'll be able to find out something about my father. All I have is my birth certificate with his name, date of birth, state born in, and that he was in the Army stationed in Washington State. His military records burned up in St. Louis in a fire in 1973. They would have told me a lot. Wrote for his birth certificate, and there was no records of his birth. I have done nothing but hit brick walls every which way I turn. I'm praying I find something useful tomorrow, anything."