Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Finding My Folks in the 1940 U.S. Census on Ancestry.com

I'm going to create a series of posts to summarize the 1940 U.S. Census findings for the different family groups that I'm related to.  I will use Ancestry.com for this study, but will revisit the findings when all of the FamilySearch indexing is available.

The first set of findings is for my Seaver family relatives.  Here is the list of persons or families that I searched for on the 1940 U.S. Census on Ancestry.com:

1)  Frederick W. Seaver (1911-1983, my father) resided in the household of his brother-in-law, Bowers Fischer, in Leominster, Worcester, Massachusetts.  See below.

2)  Frederick W. Seaver (1876-1942, my grandfather) and his daughter, Geraldine Seaver (1917-2007, my aunt) resided in Leominster, Worcester County, Massachusetts at 90 Main Street:


3)  Alma Bessie (Richmond) Seaver (1882-1962, my grandmother), wife of Frederick W. Seaver, was not found in the 1940 U.S. Census on Ancestry.com, despite my concentrated searches using all of my census searching tricks.

4)  Marion (Seaver) Braithwaite (1901-2000, my aunt) resided with her husband, Irving, and their daughter in Ashburnham, Worcester County, Massachusetts at 16 Walnut Street.


5)  Evelyn (Seaver) Wood (1903-1978, my aunt) resided with her husband, Walter, and their three children in Salem, Rockingham County, New Hampshire on Clinton Street.


6)  Ruth (Seaver) Fischer (1907-1999, my aunt) resided with her husband Bowers Fischer (indexed as Boner A. Fisher), their daughter, and my father, Frederick Seaver (indexed as Frederick W. Lawon), resided in Leominster, Worcester County, Massachusetts at 918 Main Street.


7)  Edward R. Seaver (1917-2004, my uncle) was not found in the 1940 U.S. Census despite my concentrated searches using all of my census searching tricks.  He was single at this time.  His future wife, Janet A. Roukes was enumerated as a lodger in Hanover, Grafton County, New Hampshire (indexed as "Janet A. Rousse").

8)  Harry C. Seaver (1882-1951, my great-uncle, indexed as Harry C. Leauer) resided with his wife, Rosanna (indexed as Rosenna Leauer), resided in Leominster, Worcester County, Massachusetts at 36 Monument Square (indexes as "Manumert Square").


Those were my eight "close Seaver family" targets for the 1940 U.S. Census.  I found six of them, and did not find two of them.  There were differences between the correct names and the enumerated or Ancestry-indexed names for seven persons involved out of the 16 names that I found.  I can't fault the Ancestry indexing for any of them - the enumerator's handwriting caused the problems.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/08/finding-my-folks-in-1940-us-census-on.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

1 comment:

Lauri said...

I have had similar results, found all but two that I am interested in but it has taken some time as the index wasn't correct. Tried Familysearch on the two I couldn't find, but no luck there either. I'll find them.