1950 Census

Few family historians in the United States are unaware of the excitement that awaits researchers beginning Friday, April 1, 2022. As the 72-year confidentiality restriction matures, the 1950 census schedules will be released and, along with them, detailed clues for more than 150 million Americans in the post-war era. The details relating to the release of this historic collection have not yet been shared, but we can draw some reasonable conclusions based on the experience of the most similar even in 2012.

In one of the best-ever examples of crowdsourcing, more than 160 thousand volunteers signed up and put their specialized skills to work as volunteer indexers. The digital images were available immediately, but without a keyword searchable index, the process for finding your ancestors listed among millions of population schedules was a bit more burdensome than many have become accustomed to in this age of digital genealogy research.

I was pleased to be selected to serve as a national spokesperson for the 1940 U.S. Census Community Project. Having worked with each of the members of the consortium, I was already familiar with their goals for the project. The energy in Washington D.C. on that historic release date was a special moment for those in attendance. The questions and interest from the media, coast-to-coast, was also exciting. I was proud to help bring the discussion of genealogy, and census records in particular, into so many homes on that date. Many of my articles about the 1940 census were featured in print and on leading websites.

You can follow the 1950 census site for more details as the event draws near. I'll join millions of family historians as the industry prepares for the 1950 census launch.