I have so many family members I want to find when the 1940 census is released on April 2, 2012. My maternal grandmother and my mother-in-law will have to wait until 1950 as they were in France and Germany, respectively, in 1940. But the rest of my relatives and ancestors living in the U.S. in 1940....there are hundreds.
As for the person I will look for first? That honor, I think, will go to my paternal grandfather, Walter Henry Thomas (1917-2002). The 1940 census, as best I can tell, should find him residing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - perhaps at 606 Center Street (Wilkinsburg) which he listed as his address in 1941. Pittsburgh, my home for the past 25 years, interestingly, played no part in my own family history...other than the 2-3 years that my grandfather lived here as a young man before heading south to Parris Island, South Carolina, following his enlistment in the U.S. Marine Corps on 21 July 1941. It was just enough history, however, for my grandfather to travel from Maryland to visit with me and regale me with stories of his time here when I first came to Pittsburgh as an undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon University. I grew up in the South - Virginia and South Carolina. Fate brought me to Pittsburgh, I guess.
Back to 1940. As with so many men and women of "The Greatest Generation," my grandfather's 1940 census record should provide an interesting snapshot of his life before its course was changed forever by his enlistment in the military and service in World War II. As my father put it so eloquently, in 1940 my grandfather was probably living in Pittsburgh and either ushering at a local theater, or getting emphysema from his time in the coke ovens. Just over a year later, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, in which he would serve 21 years of active duty, including service in both World War II and Korea. That trip south to Parris Island, South Carolina, for basic training, is the reason he met my grandmother in a Western Union Telegraph Office. When they later married in 1943, my branch of the family tree was born.
Pittsburgh was the "big city" where jobs could be found for my grandfather, as a single young man looking to escape work in the coal mines of his rural home town in Cambria County, Pennsylvania. The place where he hoped to start a new life... I look forward to finding him here.
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I’ll be looking for my aunt’s first husband. They were married after 1930 census, he was drafted and sent to the european front in fall of 1944 and was killed in France during that winter. There were several men from Kansas with the same last name listed as casualties in that time frame; We’ve never been sure of his legal name so it’s been hard to trace him, and everyone who knew him is gone now. I’m hoping to find them together somewhere in 1940 to confirm.
I will be looking for my faternal great grandparents. My grandfather, Wm. Charles Samuel hailed from Lyon Co., Kansas and worked for the railroad. My grandfather was born in Emporia, Lyon, Kansas in 1914 and his younger brother Geo., in Barry Co., Missouri in 1919. The last census I can find for him is 1925, Osawatomie, Miami Co., Kansas. Then a few months ago, I found an obit for his younger brother in 1966 and it states he is in Arkansas. I have never found a death record and so I am curious what he was doing between 1920-1966.
As for my grandmother, LeAnna/Leona/Lorena (poss. Watson) Samuel, her last census was also 1925 but I also have a hand written note to my father on his 1st birthday, June 1937 post marked also from Osawatomie, Miami Co., Kansas. I found a death notice for a Lorena W. Samuel 1966 in Spokane, Wa and have adopted it as hers, but I do not have concrete proof that ties it to my LeAnna/Leona/Lorena (poss. Watson) Samuel.
So many questions for this pair and so few answers thus far. I am sure that the 1940 census will answer at least some of them!
Hi Deana,
While you’re waiting for the 1940 census to be released, don’t forget about the 1930 census!
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/X7QL-CXL
The first person I will be looking for the most precious person in my life. Although we have never met, she died 26 months before I was born, I want to see a record of some kind of my older sister. I am having brick wall after brick wall finding her birth and death certificates.
My parents have passed, and I have no one to help me get these certificates or any other documentation I can hold in my hands other then the photos my mother gave me in 1996, after my father passed.
I wait very impatiently for the census to find her.
Kimberly…OMG!!! I have been looking for that record for more than two years and have looked at that entire Miami County record so many times and never caught it… THANK YOU SO MUCH!!
I don’t know how to thank you :O)
Deana, LOL! That’s more than enough thanks right there
. Glad I could brighten your day!
that bought tears to my eyes! i know the feeling!
Alas, I’m evidently an egotist. I’ve been planning to look up myself first.
The first peron I will look for is myself as I was born in 1939!