Editorial: Work that counts

This is what the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus had to say about the release of 1950 U.S. Census records after 72 years:

The recent release of the 1950 Census has inspired Vermonters interested in genealogy to track down information about family members.

We have fielded several calls (all of which we have had to refer to historical societies or archivists) from individuals seeking very personal connections to the past. One woman, who was adopted, told us she was eager to find her biological parents who moved to Vermont after World War II.

We wish all of those people the best in their search for answers.

If you love data, this release is considered a gold mine — not just because of the data itself, but because the technology used to review the information provides additional context, information and even images. The National Archives and Records Administration utilized an artificial intelligence/optical character recognition tool to extract the handwritten names from the digitized 1950 Census population schedules and develop the initial name index that will be used to search names.

On April 1, the National Archives made the population records from the 1950 Census available to the public for the first time.

For privacy reasons, records identifying people by name can’t be made public until 72 years after they are gathered during the once-a-decade U.S. head count. The 72-year rule was part of a 1952 agreement between the archivist of the U.S. at the time and the Census Bureau director at the time, but no one seems to know how they settled on that number.

Here’s what makes it so invaluable.

The digitized records have information about household members’ names, race, sex, age, address, occupations, hours worked in the previous week, salaries, education levels, marital status, where they were born as well as where their parents were born. With the help of artificial intelligence technology that scanned and deciphered the handwritten records, the National Archives has indexed them into a searchable database.

You can find it at www.archives.gov/research/census/1950 online.

The National Archives is making the census available online at no charge.

The website will include a tool allowing users to fix any incorrect names or add missing names.

“This is an opportunity for you to refine and enhance … names and make the population schedules more accessible for everyone,” U.S. Archivist David Ferriero told the Associated Press last week.

Two outside genealogical groups, Ancestry and FamilySearch, a division of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, are teaming up to serve as a quality check on the records by creating their own index separate from the National Archives. Anywhere from 400,000 to 800,000 volunteers across the U.S., under the coordination of FamilySearch, will double-check the entries that have been scanned and indexed with the actual digital images.

Traffic on the website has been massive. (The prevailing theory is that during the early days of the pandemic, when people were homebound because of quarantine, they were passing time by doing genealogical research. This data would help fill in potential blanks.)

“This is genealogy heaven when a census is rolled out,” said Matt Menashes, executive director of the National Genealogical Society. “People are waiting anxiously. It’s hard to overstate.”

According to the AP, “the new data will flesh out the contours of a dramatically different world.”

In 1950, the U.S. had less than half the 332 million residents it has today. Households were larger, with an average of 3.5 people, compared with 2.6 people per household in 2019. Just 9% of households had someone living alone in 1950, compared with 28% in 2019. Adults were also more likely to be married, with more than two-thirds of adult men and women being married in 1950 compared with less than half of men and women in 2019.

It’s a blessing we collect this information. Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution requires that a census of the population be conducted every 10 years to fairly apportion seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. State and local legislative bodies also use census data for redistricting.

The National Archives began providing public access to the 1790 to 1870 Censuses in 1942 after it received them from the U.S. Census Bureau and added them to the archives. Before 1942, the public had to contact the Census Bureau for access to the information.

Genealogists and historians have been getting a look at the sweeping historical trends through these individual records on 151 million people from the 1950 census.

For individuals who are in search of those trends and gems from the past, this is an epic treasure trove.