Genealogists laud feds' release of 1940 data

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Seventy-two years ago, Nevada and Vernon County struggled toward the end of the Great Depression and, unbeknownst to their respective 8,181 and 25,586 citizens, were about to enter World War II.

The city has more residents now, 8,327, but the county has fewer, 21,159, reflecting the decades-old trend away from agriculturally oriented life, according to census reports from the two eras.

The United States was a good deal less populous in 1940 with 132.2 million citizens, compared to the 311,591,917 it has now, and a lot was expected of those Americans remembered as "The Greatest Generation."

Releasing the answers that individuals gave to the U.S. Census Bureau's 34 questions in 1940, increased from the 10 questions that had been asked 10 years earlier, the National Archives & Records Administration in Washington, D.C., has captivated genealogists from coast to coast with its April 2 release of the 1940 records, which had had to be kept confidential for what was the length of the average lifespan of that period.

Almost three months later, groups like Ancestry.com, FindMyPast.com, FamilySearch.org, ProQuest and Archives.com have had time to index many of the names with the information they revealed. A video primer on how to access the data is available at 1940census.archives.gov.

Vernon-Cedar Genealogical Society member Valo Jones of Nevada said Monday that the information is of great interest to groups like hers, which will have a program about it. Jones said the census enumerators of 1940 may have gotten more cooperation than they received two years ago. "I think people were more trusting then," she said.

"Now they don't want to tell you a lot of stuff. My husband Ron's roots are in Kentucky and Iowa while mine are in Georgia and, on my dad's side, Denmark. It's intriguing. It takes time and patience to look that stuff up, but for example you can find where people who got married had lived next door to each other when they were kids."

The genealogical society is meeting at 10 a.m. today in the Nevada Public Library Meeting Room, and the members are touring the historic Churchill House owned by Jim and Sherry Bickel at 303 E. Vernon St.

Jack Edmiston, whose family owned the Daily Mail from 1893 to 1943, wasn't surprised that many more questions were asked in 1940, when Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, than in 1930, when Republican Herbert Hoover held office. "That's the Democrats for you," said Edmiston.

'My dad, Vernon Edmiston, had clothing stores in Nevada and Fort Scott in 1940 and by the end of the '40s had a dozen. He eventually had a chain of 25. Because we were in the newspaper and mercantile businesses, we spoke of people as families and knew them all.

"Families stayed together more as a unit then. They stayed home rather than dispersing like they do now."

The Missouri Census Data Center in Jefferson City says Vernon County's total agricultural employment dropped from 4,389 in 1930 to 3,521 in 1940, 2,812 in 1950, 1,546 in 1960, 1,028 in 1970, 954 in 1980 and 674 in 1990.

Its manufacturing employment increased from 450 in 1940 to 526 in 1950, 794 in 1960, 648 in 1970, 1,128 in 1980 and 1,266 in 1990. The number of Vernon County service industry jobs rose from 1,328 in 1940 to 1,366 in 1950, 1,958 in 1960, 2,453 in 1970, 2,980 in 1980 and 3,209 in 1990, a data center report said.

A National Archives & Records Administration news release said the 1940 Census "is the largest, most comprehensive and most recent record set available that records the names of those who were living in the United States at that time.

"Tens of millions of those people are still living today, making this a record set that connects people with recent family records," the center said. "They survived the Great Depression, fought in World War II, innovated technology like the television and microwave, sacrificed in the name of freedom, practiced thrift and compassion and understood hard work and industry."

Attempting to gauge the effects of the Depression, the census of 72 years ago asked, among other things, where people had lived in mid-1935, if they had worked for federal public works organizations like the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps, how much money they'd made in calendar 1939, if they had a radio, a flush toilet or an outhouse and if they had gas, electric or kerosene lighting.

They were also quizzed, for example, if they had worked as a frame spinner, salesman, laborer, rivet heater or music teacher and if they had been employed in a cotton mill, retail grocery store, farm, shipyard or public school.

Women were asked if they had been married more than once, their age at their first marriage and how many children they had had -- questions that the Fort Worth, Texas, Star-Telegram said "could never be asked now."

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