1950 Census - Here it comes!

Here it is, it's been released. But, as with all things, there's more to the story than the 1950 Census being released. Next comes the huge task of transcribing all the information so that it can be indexed and searched. The data isn't really helpful if no one can find what they are looking for.

How to help? This is the official 1950 Census website from the National Archives: https://1950census.archives.gov/search/ 

They have an option for you to help with transcribing, which I will be doing. To find a relative on the 1950 Census at this moment, you will need to know their Enumeration District. Without that there's no way of finding the correct Census page.

As always, I say a prayer of thanksgiving for not only all the census takers with good handwriting (it's a real chore to decipher people's bad handwriting from decades ago), but also for all those who help with the transcribing. Without transcription, it's very very difficult to find information in the census because it cannot be indexed.

So, as I mentioned above, my first find in the 1950 census were the grandparents of my husband, the Joseph Marcinek family. By 1950, Jack (Dear Husband's Dad) had left home and Nancy, age 18, was still at home. They were at 1710 West Pine Street (as they were in the 1940 Census, which made them a little easier to find in the 1950.) Joseph was 45 and his wife Marie was 43. He was listed as the Proprietor of a Retail Grocery Store (this is the store they had in the front section of their house on West Pine Street (Shamokin must have had zoning regulations that are much different than they are today.) 

I know all this may seem boring and tedious to many, but to a woman who loves genealogy and who has a "terrier-like" persistence when it comes to finding answers, this is a day filled with hope for more answers to find!