Who Needs a Search Index?

I'm speaking, of course, of the difficulties of locating your relatives in the recently released 1940 US Census. It is now available online at Archives.gov.

I spent most of today looking for family and wanted to share the following lessons-learned:

(1) You need to know the address! Since you can't search the census (yet), you actually need to know a street address for the people you are trying to locate. After that, I recommend you locate the address on map (you can use Google Maps). The reason for this part of the process is to locate crossing streets.

(2) You need a lot of time! Without a search index, you will only be able to locate a relative if you search through multiple pages of the different Enumeration Districts. So, even if you know the city and the street address, you may find that you end up viewing between 30 and 100 pages to locate someone. This is especially true if the address is on the boundary of one of the EDs (in that case, I recommend you view the ED map).

(3) You need a lot of patience! The census takers walked up and down streets in their ED, so the order isn't necessarily logical to a person who peruses the films. You may find that they walked down the opposite side of the street where your relative lived and then took "detours" onto side streets (for pages and pages) before returning to the street of (your) interest. In addition, after all the looking, you may find that your relatives weren't there in 1940. I've even seen a case where the street locator didn't correctly identify the ED - so I had to browse to find it (after referencing the ED map).

To put things into perspective, I successfully located nine families after five hours on my first day of searching. However, I learned a lot about the process and I expect to find relatives faster in the future.

After you take your own stab at browsing the 1940 Census, please share your lessons-learned in the comments section. Happy hunting!