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How to Search the 1950 U.S. Census.

On April 1, 2022, the National Archives unveiled the personal data of 151 million Americans from the 1950 Census – 72 years after it was gathered. It was the genealogical equivalent of the arrival of a comet. The Census is taken every 10 years. For privacy, most of the information is kept secret for 72 years. The secret information provides a highly detailed block-by-block look at who lived with whom, where they lived, what they did for a living and how much they earned. Now you can view this information and look up members of the family and their neighbors. Or anyone else. There’s just one catch. It isn’t easy. Optical-reader technology is still pretty primitive. What follows are tips from Brian Wong – an expert amateur genealogist.

Viewing data from the 1950 Census shows where people lived, how families grew, aged, and responded to the upheaval brought about by World War II which ended in 1945. For Chinese-Americans, the Exclusion Act ended in 1943. The members of their foreign-born Chinese families won the right to become naturalized U.S. citizens. The War Brides Act of 1945 enabled U.S. military service members to bring to America their spouses and children from overseas without regard to immigration quotas. The decade between 1940 and 1950 saw a large growth in the Chinese population in the U.S.

Unlike the 2020 Census, which was largely a mail-in process, the 1950 Census was people going door to door. The 1950 Census was conducted by having census takers go to all of the dwelling units within an enumeration district (a few blocks in a crowded city or an entire county in less-populated rural areas). The census taker would record responses to questions, including the name, relationship to head of household, race, sex, age, marital status, state or country of birth and naturalization (if foreign born) of everyone in that unit. Other questions were asked about the employment of persons over 14 years old.  

Now, the 1950 Census has been digitized and can be searched by name. The names have been extracted using a computer optical character recognition (OCR) process, so there may be many errors depending on the clarity of the handwriting and quality of the scan. Members of the public can help refine the name index for better accuracy and easier access to the records, using a transcription feature that will be available on the 1950 Census website.

 “We are calling on the public to assist with making the name index for the census more accurate by helping to refine the first draft of the names that have been created through our digital tools,” said National Archives Chief Innovation Officer Pamela Wright. “We are asking for volunteers to assist with transcribing those names that were unreadable or misread by the technology.”

To look up your ancestor, the easiest way to get started is to enter the state and county/city where he/she lived in 1950 in the dropdown menus. Then enter the name of the person in the search box and hit the search button. However, if you are searching a city like Los Angeles or San Francisco, you may get hundreds or thousands of results. 

The best way to reduce the number of results is to search by Enumeration District (ED). In order to identify an ED, you need to know where the person lived in 1950. There are a couple of tools to help identify EDs.  One is a website, Unified 1950 Census ED finder developed by Steve Morse: https://stevemorse.org/census/unified.html .

• In this website, enter state, county and city using the dropdown menus.  When I enter CA, Los Angeles, and Los Angeles to find my grandfather, Chang Wing Wong (one of the founders of Kwong Hing Lung market), hundreds, maybe thousands of ED appear.  
• In the streets box, select a street from the dropdown menu for streets in Los Angeles.  I recalled that the family lived on East Adams Blvd., so I selected Adams Blvd., and the number of ED was cut down to approximately 100.  
• In another box, select a cross or back street. I recalled that the home was near San Pedro Street, so selecting San Pedro as a cross street reduced the number of EDs to two. 
• Clicking on one of the ED led to census pages, or written descriptions of the streets in the ED, depending on buttons selected in the box below the ED list.  
• Clicking on 66-1752 with census Pages selected leads to another tab where the image viewer is selected from a choice of NARA, Family Search or Ancestry.  So far, only the NARA viewer worked for me (likely because California has not been indexed for the other viewers yet).  Select the NARA viewer, which takes you to the 1950 Census website mentioned above, 1950census.archives.gov.
• On the 1950 Census website, the search box shows CA and the ED selected.  The 66-1752 ED contained 19 pages.  Each page may be viewed by clicking on the Population Schedules button.  Or:
• In the Name box type in a name. After entering Wong and clicking search, three pages were found with matched names identified by computer handwriting analysis as Wong or similar.  The names were Hong, Lew Wong, and Wing Chung.  Selecting the Population Schedules button for the Wing Chung name pulled up the handwritten census form and I immediately recognized my grandfather and family. My previous article [title] explains some of the origin of the family’s name.

A second way to identify ED is to use the Ancestry.com 1950 census tool (available with Ancestry membership). The appearance of the home page and navigating to the Explore Maps button may differ depending on Ancestry.com membership and home page setup. 

• From the Ancestry.com home page, click on the “The 1950 U.S. Census … Get Started button”.  You may get to a page that has a list of states that have been indexed.  Few states have been indexed at this time
• It may take a couple of selections to get to a page with the “Explore Maps” button.  (You may get prompted to enter your Ancestry membership here, if you haven’t already signed in.  You may be able to sign up for a temporary membership).
• A map of the U.S. will appear with several large spots on the map.  Either enter an address into the search box, or click on one of the buttons closest to your search location.
• If clicking on buttons on the map, continue to click on buttons until you get to a map of the area with EDs outlined. Click on the zoom magnifying glass to enlarge the map.  When I got to a size where I could identify E. Adams Boulevard and San Pedro Street, the ED 66-1752 popped up. 
• Go back to the 1950census.archives.gov site and enter the State and ED. There may be multiple EDs with the same numbers in the country, so at least a state and possibly county or city need to be entered with the ED.  Continue as in the last step as in the previous section.

Finding Gom Benn families in the census

I found the census records for the families of the men I discussed in my previous articles:  Chang Wing Wong, Lung Yuen Hoi, and Shoo Tan Wong.  My grandfather Chang Wing Wong and his family were found at the 616 Adams Boulevard address I remember from my childhood. He used the name Chung Wing.

Shoo Tan Wong and his family (wife Lee Shee and six sons and three daughters) were found at 722 E. Ninth Pl. In the previous 1940 census, the family was living at 717 E. Ninth Pl.  One addition living in his household was his daughter-in-law, Lee Shee, the wife of his oldest son.  

The family of Lung Yuen Hoi was found living at 244 W. 74^th St., which was the address given later by Lung Yuen Hoi on his citizenship application filed in 1959. His son, Leonard F. Hoi is listed as the head of the household with his wife, son and daughter. Wong Lin Jue, listed as a lodger with his wife and daughter, is the brother of Leonard Hoi.  Lung Yuen Hoi, himself, was not listed. I don’t know if this was a deliberate omission, or if he was living elsewhere.