How To Find The Names Of Someone's Parents

Using U.S. census records for family history

When you start began researching your family tree – whether just a few days ago or several decades past, it'southward probable y'all began by collecting letters, photographs, certificates, and news clippings from around the business firm. While each record blazon offers something unique, few are equally of import tofamily history as census records.

Using census records to enquiry your family is the closest thing to time travel. You can return to a certain engagement and place in history and "meet" your family, possibly learning about ancestors you never knew existed.

WaltDisney Census
Walt Disney in the 1930 U.S. demography

Althoughvital records (birth, wedlock, and death certificates) are official sources that document one event for a specific individual, census records capture an entire population at a specified fourth dimension and place, thereby providing an overall picture of unabridged family groups.

Passenger lists to the United States and Canada, U.S. clearing and naturalization records, and U.S. demography records are the nigh pop among genealogists. Luckily they are now readily available on findmypast.com, and with just a name or keyword search, y'all can likely find one or more than family unit members listed among the many millions of names dutifully recorded decades earlier.

How to Search Census Records

You may accept a nascence or union certificate which supports the dates and spellings obtained from other sources. In this case, using an electronic index like findmypast.com to search the census may lead to quick success using the name, location, and dates provided.

Search tip: If either the last name or start proper name are prone to misspellings or could easily accept been misread by the person who transcribed the record, your search may be a bit more difficult. Searching with name variants will assist wait for names that are like to the specific first or last name you lot are searching for.

Tips for Browsing 1940 Census Images

Prior to the availability of an electronic index for the 1940 census, your only option volition exist to browse the collection of digitized images in your family unit search. There are several things y'all can do to minimize the time required while increasing your chances for success.

Using the census date of Apr ane, 1940, approximate which family members you lot tin can wait to find in the census and where.

Were you born prior to the census engagement?

How about your parents? If and then, browse past state, county, and city/boondocks to narrow the number of images you'll need to browse.

Ideally, y'all should create lists to approximate the different family groups you await to find, including the names and ages of siblings, as well equally your direct-line ancestors.

If you have prove of an accost for your family in 1940, attempt to locate the 'Enumeration District' or E.D. which corresponds to that accost. An East.D. was assigned as the geographic surface area used past census workers to consummate their task of collecting information inside one month in 1940. There are some useful 1-Step tools which may aid (come across world wide web.SteveMorse.org ), but it will depend upon whether your family was in an urban or rural setting.

If your family moved during the depression years of the 1930s, yous may not know their dwelling in 1940. One of the unique aspects of the 1940 census was to also capture residency data for each person on April 1, 1935. If you have testify supporting an accost in 1935, but not 1940, endeavour browsing images in this surface area to run into what you might find.

How to use demography records

Milton Bradley in the 1860 U.Southward. Census records

Many countries conduct a periodic count (oft chosen an enumeration) of the population for one reason or another. In the Us, the first census of the population was conducted in 1790 and has been taken every ten years since.

Early U.S. census data recorded the names of heads of household only. Others living within the household were just represented past counts for age, gender, and other categories. As the U.S. population grew and expanded to include more states and territories, government officials used each census as an opportunity to larn about the irresolute face and needs of the nation.

To address concerns about the confidentiality of information collected for each private, the U.S. adopted a 72-year privacy dominion (other countries employ a 100-year restriction). In previous decades, microfilm rolls were fabricated available at regional athenaeum to satisfy the demand from family unit historians and other researchers.

The 1940 U.S. Federal Census was conducted using a census date of April 1, 1940. Therefore all census data specific to an individual was restricted until April 1, 2012. Once the 72-year privacy restriction is met, population schedules go the responsibility of the National Athenaeum and Records Assistants.

Fact: The 1940 census was the offset U.S. demography to be released online, meaning that digitized images of previously filmed population schedules are attainable via the Cyberspace.

Search tip: You tin examine all members of a household and their human relationship to i some other, besides as the neighboring families in the community. It is common in U.South. census records to discover large concentrations of 1 or more ethnic groups living in close proximity to one some other. Many larger cities had (and still have) conspicuously divers neighborhoods dominated past families of one ethnic or religious origin.

Digitization and transcription of records

Previous generations of family unit historians may have establish census records difficult and time consuming to use. Even though finding aids and surname-based indices were created, microfilm-based demography research required patience and persistence.

Advances in computer applied science have profoundly expanded the availability and usefulness of demography records, even for those but starting out. The process of scanning and converting records to electronic format is called 'digitization'.

Once census and other records are digitized, the contents are oftentimes typed or 'transcribed' into a computerized database with respective pointers back to the digitized image. After the transcription is complete, the resulting database serves equally an electronic alphabetize to the entire gear up of records.

Both digitization and transcription provide significant research benefits, but each tin can also introduce certain challenges.

How to browse census records

Browsing census records can be a useful strategy, especially for those who have many family members living within a divers geographic area.

Search tip: The trick to successful demography browsing is to focus your fourth dimension and try on the smallest number of images possible. The more precise you tin can be about an accost, the fewer images you'll accept to evaluate line-by-line.

Knowing from a nascence record that your likely lived at 12 Oak Street in the metropolis of Waterbury, Connecticut, is far more precise than simply suspecting they lived somewhere in Connecticut.