Genealogists Cheer 1930 Census Release

Find out how and where your family was living
five months after the stock market crash.

APRIL 1 -- Hailing the government's release of the complete records of the 1930 census, genealogists and family historians are enthralled to have access to a new bountiful trove of unique information.

Under law, records from a U.S. Federal Census are locked up for 72 years after census day, in this case April 1, 1930. On that day, the 15th decennial census found us to be a country of 123,202,624 people, many of whom were still in shock from the stock market crash that occurred five months earlier.

The 1930 census release comes from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in the form of 2,667 reels of microfilm with images of written records compiled by an army of census enumerators. Pursuing these records, genealogists can learn the names of every person living in each household, their relationship to the head of the household, if they can read or write, whether they attended school or college, occupation, place of birth, citizenship status, if they lived on a farm, if they owned a radio and more than 20 other key facts.

Census records are available to researchers at NARA facilities across the country. For the nearest location and other information about the 1930 census, go the NARA web site. The Mormon Church's Family History Centers and Ancestry.com will also have the census available. Ancestry.com is digitizing the records so people can see them at any time on their home computers. By year-end the company also expects to have an index available.

Lacking an index, users must know their family's street address when the census was taken. The address will pinpoint the Census Enumeration District where the family lived. Enumeration District Maps are included with the census microfilms released by the NARA. The maps guide users to the specific record.

Besides a family's own records and recollections, people can consult old telephone and city directories available at libraries and historical or genealogical societies. NARA has microfilmed many city directories.

There are also American Indian Census Schedules. Though required to be included in every census conducted between 1885 and 1940, the 1930 census records include extra information, such as the degree of Indian blood.

Given its richness in extra details, family historians can't wait to dive into the 1930 census. Anticipation has been building for 72 years.

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