1940 Census - Marcinek

For Ancestry geeks like me there's nothing more fun than finding new, real, pertinent information about your (or someone else's) ancestors. The Census records are an amazingly good way to get information about your ancestors. The Census records are only released 72 years after they were taken, this is for privacy reasons of a sort... by time 72 years have passed most of the people who answered the census have passed on and the details of their lives can be disclosed without consequences to them.

So, let's take a walk through a census record.... This one is an example from my dear husband's family tree.

The family lived at 1710 West Pine Street in Coal Township, Pennsylvania. They owned their home and it was valued at $3000 (about $57,000 in 2022 dollars). Marie was the one who answered the Census-taker's questions and she also gave herself as the head of the family. If you  knew her, you could imagine her doing this!

Marie was 3 years younger than Joseph, her husband. She had a high school education and he had 3 years of a college education. She was born in Illinois and in 1935 lived in the same house she was currently living in. Joseph was listed as an "unpaid family worker" in a family business. They owned a small grocery store that was in the front rooms of their house on 1710 West Pine Street. His income was $1200 per year, which in current dollars is a little over $24,000.

The 1950 Census is being released in a couple of days. I don't know what information will be immediately available on Ancestry.com and how long it might take them to index all the information available, but I am SO excited! Recent (this century) Census records are only released every 10 years!

Just for fun, here are some Newspapers.com stories I found about the Marcineks in the early  1940s. These are from the Shamokin News-Dispatch newspaper. A little backstory. John Marcinek was the father of Joseph Marcinek and Anna was his wife.