Now that you know how to find your family in the 1940 Census, you may ask, why should I try to find my family in this census? Well, to put it simply, because you can find out cool things about them! Here are some examples of cool things I found about my family.
What kinds of information can you find about your family in this census?
You can use the census as a great jumping-off point to talk to older relatives about what their lives were like in 1940. When I found my dad, Donald Allen, in the 1940 Census in Lawrence County, Indiana, Indian Creek Township, his family was living on the 
family farm they purchased in the 1910s that is still owned by my family today (though just barely). All the neighbors listed near his family were people I had heard him talk about all his life, such as his childhood playmates, Everett, Clifford, Pig, and Tuffy whom he explored caves with and scrapped with, back behind the school house. I also found the neighbor woman who told everyone that an escaped German prisoner came to her house and made her “sit on his lap” [her words] for several hours, to explain why a man had been seen leaving her house while her husband was at work. My dad was a young boy during World War II, and he was so worried about the supposed German escapee loose in his neighborhood, that he kept his baseball bat by the door, so that, as he explained it, his mom could open the door, and my dad could hit the guy over the head, before the prisoner tried any funny business on them. He wasn’t going to allow himself to be made to sit on the lap of any foreign prisoner… I need to be sure to record this and other colorful stories about my dad’s life before it is too late. SJCPL has a number of resources about how to record family stories, be sure to check these out at your favorite library location.
You can also use the census to go back and explore your family’s neighborhood in 1940 and create a map or diagram of where important landmarks were located. I found my mom’s dad, Robert Mitchell, in Barry County, Michiga
n, Barry Township on page 21. I looked there because I knew that this was the township/area the family had always lived in, though they moved often during the Depression. My mom would love to know the exact house they were living in, but in rural districts, sometimes the census just recorded a rural route number. Mom had always heard that her aunt Pauline had let her mother (my mom’s grandma, Dolly) live in the “Dudley shack” on her property. She wonders if that is where her father and his mother were living at this census. It seems likely. Dolly Mitchell is shown living next door to her married daughter Pauline Dudley in this census, and we don’t know of any other houses on that property, other than this shack. From what we understand, it was a 2 room building that probably did not have electricity. Dolly was a young, poor widow with a sixth grade education (see column 9 above) who may have had no other place to go. We know that earlier in the Depression, the family often would eat just turnips for their meals. Today, we can go back to the house where Pauline and her family were living in 1940, which still stands, and diagram the locations of these important buildings. We can also ask her son Kenneth, my mom’s cousin, to see if he has any more knowledge of the shack. These finds have opened up more questions that we seek to answer.
You can also access your family’s economic status, work history & schooling information. According to the 1940 census, my grandpa, David Allen, worked 44 weeks and made $528 in 1939. He was employed as a laborer on a government road project (probably with the Works Progress Administration – WPA). All his neighbors worked on the same project, which indicates to me that this area was hard-hit by the Depression, and without those government New Deal jobs, the folks in that neighborhood may have been poverty-stricken and broke. My grandparents lived in a home they owned, which was worth $250, and they farmed. On the other hand, my grandma Fannie Allen’s brother, William Cezar, was 25 years old in 1940. He had not held a job in 1939, he brought in no income, 
and was listed as having no occupation in the census. Now, one might ask, why not? He was not handicapped or disabled, he was living with his aged mother, who did not have any means of support, so it would seem as if he should be working. However, if we look closer, we see a reason why he did not work, an “S” in a column (not shown above), meant he was in school that year. Which brings up another question, where did he go to school and what did he study? When I knew him, he was retired, but according to family stories, spent most of his adult life living with his mother and not working. If he had a college or trade degree, I didn’t know about it. So I asked my dad and he said Bill did work as a architect/draftsman at times, so perhaps the training was related to that field. Uncle Bill was eccentric and different when I knew him – great fun and wonderful with kids, but a little odd. I don’t know if we will ever know the reason he didn’t work much, since that whole side of the family is now deceased, and my dad and aunt don’t know the answer to this question. Which brings to mind again, the importance of speaking to your relatives about their lives and asking them questions you may have now, while you still can. If you wait, you may miss your opportunity.
I’d be interested to hear what you find out about your ancestors from this census.
Census indexing update: you can now search the 1940 Census by name for persons living in Colorado, Delaware, and Kansas at FamilySearch’s website. On Ancestry’s site, you can search by name for persons living in Nevada, Delaware, and the District of Columbia. And, if your family lived in another unindexed state, please come to Local & Family History Services and see if we can help you find your family by address or using other tricks we may have up our sleeves.
