Tracing the roots of your family tree
In early April, Chicagoan Mazurka Wojciechowska went online and found information she hadn’t known about her family.
Just days earlier, the federal government had posted 3.8 million images of previously unreleased documents from the 1940 U.S. census, and Wojciechowska was one of millions who went to computers to get a glimpse of the past.
What she discovered were details about seven ancestors — including her mother — who were living at her great-grandfather’s home in the 2000 block of West Bradley Place in Chicago.
“I gave myself a pat on the back; I found them right away,” said Wojciechowska, 55, a folk musician. “I learned that my great-grandfather was an engineer, and his son was an architect. It’s truly fascinating that family history can be found on the Internet.”
Anyone with an Internet connection can now find out what grandma and grandpa — and anyone else who was around — were doing in 1940. Officials at the National Archives posted the census documents April 2 at 1940census.archives.gov, and as of last week, there had been more than 1.5 billion hits.
Searching the 1940 census not only can get people in touch with their roots — genealogists say the census also provides a history lesson and a snapshot of a generation that was coming out of the Great Depression and on the brink of America’s entry into World War II.
Knowing your family history “can help put your own life in perspective,” said Ginger Frere, a genealogist and reference librarian at the Newberry Library in Chicago. “Census records are a good place to start.”
Though some census data, like city populations, are released within months of being compiled, personal information, under federal privacy laws, cannot be released for 72 years.
The recently released records were the first census documents to be posted on the National Archives website, according to government officials. Documents from other censuses can only be reviewed on private genealogy websites or in person at a National Archives center.
A drawback to the 1940 census data is that currently a person can only be found by his or her 1940 home address or special census district number. National Archives officials said the census database will be indexed by names in about seven months.
To prepare for the release, National Archives officials spent three years digitizing microfilm census records and checking every scanned census document. The documents, which were filled out by hand by census takers, include such information as gender, race, occupation, schooling, salary, home value, rental information and participation in government-sponsored work programs of the era.
There is also supplementary information supplied by randomly selected individuals, such as native language, more in-depth employment data and military service record.
Constance Potter, reference archivist with the National Archives, said access to the 1940 census fills an important void for genealogists and people doing research on their ancestors. It has been 10 years since 1930 census data were released for public review.
Frere said the online publication of the 1940 census has spurred interest in genealogy.
“People have been waiting for the (1940) census to come out for a long time,” said Frere. “Genealogy in general has become more mainstream and accessible thanks to the Internet.”
Genealogist Craig Pfannkuche, corresponding secretary of the Chicago Genealogy Society who teaches genealogy classes throughout the Chicago area, has a warning for people delving into genealogy.
“Family members lie,” said Pfannkuche, laughing. “People often find out things they don’t want to know, but once you start looking, it can become addicting.”
While researching his own family, Pfannkuche found out that an ancestor thought to be the family hero was actually a family villain. While doing research for other people, he has uncovered previously unknown siblings, divorces and even secret marriages.
For general genealogy searching, Pfannkuche recommends using Heritage Quest Online, which can often be accessed for free by logging on with your library card to your local library website. He said other databases, such as Ancestry.com, are only free if accessed at a library.
Heritage Quest, which can be searched using an ancestor’s name, contains U.S. census records from 1790 to 1930, along with 28,000 family and local history books, including some early military records.
