Okay, you say what is the fuss? Maybe you are thinking to yourself, what a daunting task indexing the 1940 census is.

The fuss, genealogical speaking, is that we will shortly have a look into our own grandparents and parents lives. The 1930 was awesome, but the 1940 census enumerated 18 yrs before I was born (you really don’t have to bother to do the math !), it will capture both of my parents and  my grandparents and a few of my great grandparents.

Daunting task, sure if one person does the indexing or even 100 would be indexing the census. The more folks we get to index the less time it will take to get the thing indexed! Is it hard, in one word NO. There is a wonderful program that you will install, if anyone has worked with the program called Transcript it is very much the same. The census page will show up in the upper part of the screen and on the lower will be the areas for you to fill in. Probably the only difficulty you might run into is either bad image  or hand writing that is hard to read. The writing should be somewhat easier to read as it is closer to the cursive that we learned in school.

I would urge you to visit the U.S 1940 Census Community Project and sign up to index. After you sign up and download the program you will find a practice 1940 census that you can try. I have indexed for a while and the great part is you go at your own speed and they don’t hound you about what you have or have not accomplished! Do you have five minutes a day! Perfect, 2 hours wonderful! Just take a few and help out.

After you have done the run through of the 1940 sample there is a contest that you can enter at U.S 1940 Census Community Project information is found here.

Who will you find in the 1940 Census!

Happy Hunting!

As part of the1940census.com ambassador program this blog post enters me into a drawing for a Kindle Fire

Julie Hogston - Visit Website