Federal Regulations currently restrict access to the US Federal Census records until 72 years after they are recorded. You can read about the history of this “72-year rule” here. Thus, it was with great expectation that anyone in the genealogical field was waiting anxiously for April, 1, 2022, when the 1950 census results would be made available. I was among those waiting.
It took the folks at Ancestry just two days to scan all the
microfilm results so that the images could be read by the public. It would be
several more days before their proprietary handwriting analysis software could
read all these scanned images so that they could begin the process of making
indexes. But many, like myself, began by just looking through the unindexed
images. I initially focused on my hometown, Wolcott, CT – looking first for
myself (I would have been 1 year and 8 months old when the census was taken in
April 1950), then reading through all 100+ pages in the town results looking
for relatives and for any of my eventual school classmates (we were all born in
1948). Once the index was made available a few weeks later, I could conduct
more focused research – looking into nearby towns where my relatives lived,
etc.
Lots of Confirmation
Most of what I found was simply confirmation of all that I
had remembered growing up. I was able to find my parents, myself, and my
sister. I also found my aunts/uncles and grandparents living where I expected.
And I located a great number of my future classmates.
[Alan Russell Census]
I found my wife and her family in Michigan. And, once the
indexes were available, I was able to locate other relatives and the few
cousins who were older than I living in the homes where I visited them when
growing up. In a way, it was almost an emotional letdown – since I had been
living at the time, nearly everything was just confirmation of what I already
knew. Unlike doing ancestral research where I am constantly finding new things,
there was very little new to learn as I had been living at the time and my
memory is pretty good even though it was 72 years ago.
I did find a few issues with the census. There were
instances where the census taker, despite having excellent handwriting, was not
the best at spelling (or where he/she wrote down what he/she heard and there
were inaccuracies as a result). For example, I initially couldn’t find my Uncle
Tony and Aunt Vi in Wolcott when searching by last name, so I dropped the last
name and just looked for “Violet”. It turned out that the census taker wrote
down “Semerardo” instead of “Semeraro” and the soundex system used by Ancestry
did not equate the two.
[Semerardo]
There were also a few processing errors in the Wolcott
census results where some pages were copied twice when converting from paper to
microfilm. For example, I am listed twice as pages 62 and 63 of the Wolcott
results are duplicates. It makes me wonder what the folks at Ancestry will do
with these duplicate pages once they complete the indexing process.
A Few Surprises
There were a few surprises where I either learned something
new, or the information forced me to look at things in a new light.
One of things I learned was about my Aunt Alie (Alice
Pierpont). I knew that she had been a child nurse/nanny originally. The family
story was that the crib that my parents placed me (and later all my siblings in
turn) had been owned by a family where she was working and when that child got
old enough to graduate to a bed the family knew that her younger sister would
be needing a crib and gave it to her. It was a very high-quality crib for the
time. Later in my aunt’s life she became a nurse working for a clinic that
served the Pima Indians in AZ. It was in AZ that she met my Uncle Joe who had
just lost his wife and she married him and raised his three children (my
“step-“cousins Dave, Tom, and Ted). That was in 1958, so I expected to find her
in the 1950 census living with a family as their resident nanny/nurse. (I had
been told that one family she worked for lived in Easton, PA, and at the time
of my parents wedding in 1946 she was noted as living in Atlantic City, NJ.)
So, I was surprised to find her in Bridgeport, CT, as part
of a large group of nearly 200 young women who were student nurses at the
hospital there. All but a few of this group were between 18 and 22 and
unmarried, i.e., typical college age women working on their RN degrees. My aunt
was one of only 3 who were older than 24, and at age 28 she was the oldest one
in the program. So evidently, in order to move beyond just being a child
nanny/nurse, she had gone back to school to get her RN.
[Alice Pierpont]
Another finding that caused me do some further investigation
was finding my Uncle Bob and Aunt Dot (Hill) living on Salem Road in Prospect,
right next door to my grandparents (my Grandpa Russell and his second wife whom
we called “Nana” Russell). I have some early memories of visiting the Hills in
this house, but seeing my cousins, Carolyn and Bobby, at ages 7 and 5 in the
1950 census made me wonder about their growing up years.
[Hill census 1950]
When my parents married in 1946, the Hill family lived at 80
Midland Rd in Waterbury. I have several pictures from that time with the house
number clearly visible. Thus, sometime after 1946 and before 1950, the family
moved to Prospect to the house right next door to my grandparents. The next
picture is that house (it was white back in 1950) and the newer structure on
the left is where the small house of my grandparents was located.
[Hill house 1950]
In the early 1950’s, the town of Wolcott was going through a
period of rapid expansion. In particular, the area between Beach Rd and Lyman
Rd was being carved up with a network of roads and hundreds of 1/3-1/2 acre
lots. The Hill family purchased one of these. According to Wolcott land
records, the house at 48 Laurel Lane was built in 1952.
[Hill house 1952]
Carolyn was born in 1942, so she would have started first
grade in 1948 (in Prospect?). After four years she would have begun fifth grade
in Wolcott in 1952. But after only four more years, she would have gone to high
school in Waterbury in 1956 as Wolcott did not yet have a high school. Bobby,
being two years younger, would have gone to school in Prospect for only two
years before starting third grade in Wolcott in 1952. But when Wolcott High
School opened in 1958 he was part of the first class of students to attend
there, graduating in 1962. So, both of them had somewhat of a punctuated
education, having to move, leaving their former classmates behind, and having
to make new ones as they transitioned to a new school in a new town.
A Mystery
But as I examined the 1950 census records, I came across one
item that I can only describe as a mystery. In looking at the entry for my
Uncle Dick and Aunt Trudy [Gertrude], they were living in Prospect, CT on
Summit Rd as expected. But there was a third person as part of their household
who I did not recognize.
[Richard Pierpont census]
As you can see in this entry, Richard is listed as the head
of household, age 24. Gertrude is listed as his wife, age 23. Those are both
correct and are as expected. But the third line is for a “John L.” who is called “son” and age 3. But they did
not have any children until my cousin, Cindy, was born in 1952. So, who is
John? And there are two things about this entry that are a little unusual.
First, this census taker consistently indicates the carrying forward of a last
name through the use of a long underscore followed by a comma. Every entry on
the 70+ pages filled out by this census taker is done the same way – except
this one, where there is no last name given.
Also, if you look closely at the age of John, it appears
that the census taker started writing the number two with a downward stroke,
but then he changed half-way through, went back up and made the digit into a
three instead. (See blowup below.) Why would this have happened?
[John age column]
I’ve contacted my cousin Cindy to see if she has any
memories of things her parents may have said about this situation. Her response
was “I am not aware of any John L. who lived with my parents. There is no one
alive who I might ask. So … this remains a mystery.”
My best guess at this point is that John was some sort of
foster child whom they were taking care of for a brief time. Since foster
children are supposed to remain anonymous, that might explain why they would
not give his name to the census taker. And if they did not know a lot about
him, Trudy might have answered the question about his age with something like,
“He’s two … no, wait a minute, I think he just had his third birthday.”
All this is highly speculative, and as my cousin says, there
is no one left alive to ask. So, I suppose it will have to remain a family
mystery.
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